SPRI Global is currently supporting UNICEF Philippines and the Government of Philippines in designing and delivering a capacity building training on social policy costing. This training will be delivered to both the executive and legislative branches of the Government of Philippines.

The overall purpose of the project is to train staff of Government of Philippines institutions on how to approach the costing of policies, legislations and programmes for children within the social sector. Currently there are limited capacities to cost social policies and legislations within the civil servant workforce of the Philippines, leading to unfunded policy and legislative.
The main objectives of the study are to:

1. Provide a critical overview of conceptual and methodological approaches to costing and the impact on fiscal space;
2. Provide a methodological framework to guide costing of policies, programs and legislation;
3. Determine the available data in the Philippines that can be used for costing of policies, programs and legislation;
4. Support participants in actual costing of the policies within national planning initiatives such as the Philippines Development Plan;
5. Support participants in actual costing of proposed legislations.

It is expected that the training will provide participants with the relevant skills to provide costing within their respective institutions. Particularly, this will include an ability to:

• Identify policies, strategies, programmes and legislations that involve financial costs;
• Identify an appropriate approach and method of estimating the costs associated with policies, strategies, programmes and legislation;
• Estimate the costs of policies, strategies, programmes and legislations;
• Produce a costing tool or manual on how to formulate cost estimates of policies, strategies, programmes and legislations;
• Deliver a capstone project that reflects all of the above skills.