1276 Real food for thought: NGOs making a huge, but often unreflected difference to Asian national accounts
austraLasia 1276
Real food for thought: NGOs making a huge, but often
unreflected difference to Asian national accounts
BANGKOK: 8th October 2005 -- It would be difficult
to put
an exact
figure on the direct funding, contribution of personnel and economic
impact of Salesian NGO and not-for-profit
activity in the East Asia
Oceania Region, but in the light of information coming from a Bangkok
Conference this week, the figure, contribution and impact are likely to
be rather more significant than governments acknowledge - if they
acknowledge, and that may be the problem!
The Bangkok Conference looked at the role of
non-profits and how to
get more governments to include them in their national staistics or
'national accounts'. The Conference was organised by the United
Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia-Pacific (ESCAP).
And
the statistics they have turn on their head the assumption that
non-profit work - and Salesian activity falls under this category - is
welcome and nice but not essential, and thus could be done away with.
In the Philippines, non-profit and volunteer
organisations are a
1.2 billion dollar (USD) industry, with expenditures reaching 1.5
percent GDP. They employ five more times people than huge utility
companies and have many more employees than in the country's biggest
companies, including San Miguel Corp (beer and other beverages and
foodstuffs). "We didn't know the contributions were this big until we
looked into the figures" pointed out Prof. Ledivina Carino of the Uni
of Philippines College of Public Administration and Governance.
In many countries, governments give funds to
non-profit
organisations to reach groups of people they find hard to reach
otherwise. This is certainly true of Italy and Germany, where the
Salesians have either large Mission and Development Offices or NGO
organisations (like VIS and JDW). Many of these funds end up in
the
EAO region (though not only).
To date, 18 countries - including Belgium, France,
Italy, Czech
Republic, Argentina, Brazil, Kenya, South Africa, Australia, New
Zealand, Japan - have committed to changing their statistical systems
or adding what are called 'satellite accounts' to track profits.
It is
interesting to note that in both South Korea and Japan, recent years
have seen a huge growth in voluntary groups (5,000 of them listed in
the South Korean NGO directory alone, and 30% of these reporting annual
budgets of 10,000-100,000 USD).
And while it might be difficult to put an exact
figure on the
Salesian part in this activity, it would be interesting to give some
thought to a global picture of 'Salesians NGO', as well as the
usual
Salesians SDB.
VOCABULARY
NGO: abbreviation for Non-Government
Organisation
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