TNAG-0531-FCO40-626-Application-of-International-Labour-Convention-to-Hong-Kong-1975 — Page 166

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The present state of social security planning

in developing countries and particularly in Asia

Progress in social security planning seems to be determined by the evolution of each of the two components which constitute this term, namely "social security" and "planning". The industrialised world outside socialist countries has a 100- year-old tradition in social security but it is only now with the advent of national planning that this

sector becomes an object of studies for planning purposes. In the developing world the need for national planning is more widely recognised in view of the situation of stress inherent in the position of these countries, but the progress on the "social security planning scale" seems to be determined more by the length of experience with social security schemes and by the social security concept itself. We may observe this phenomenon in the example of Africa, Latin America and Asia.

The UN Economic Commission for Africa, which included social security for the first time in its "Survey of Economic Conditions in Africa, 1971", observed that "while most African States, in recent times, have developed elaborate national development plans which incorporate projects for education, health, housing, social welfare, etc., only a very small number number of these countries have actually succeeded in including specific sectoral chapters on social security in their plans".1 A rapid examination of the national development plans in Africa will confirm that only two or three of these devote possibly a paragraph or two to a general statement of objectives in the social security field or to a few specific projects. The reasons given to explain the situation in Africa may be summed up as follows:

(a)

(b)

(c)

the development planners lack the basic data whereby to determine the priority to be accorded to social security in relation to other social sectors;

there is a complete lack of sectoral planning units for social security within national planning commissions;

social security operations involve income transfers which do not represent public expenditures, as such, and to which many of the regular techniques of allocative planning are irrelevant.

In Latin America the situation in the late 1960s seems to have been very much the same as in Africa. The Director of the Social Affairs Division of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America wrote, in a paper published in 1968: "It is surprising to find that this area of public social action, in spite of its prominence in the expectations of the average wage earner, the enormous suns channeled through it and its complex influence on the labor force, has been practically untouched by the development planning movement of recent years. A 11 cf

the

published plans and investment programs of the Latin American countries specify social objectives, most generally in the sectors of education, health and housing but often also in income distribution, employment, food consumption, water supply and sanitation, with occasional mention of clothing and footwear consumption and of community development. Only one or two plans discuss social security. Sectoral planning units linked to the national planning agency, such as most countries now possess for education and health, do not exist in social security", 2

It appears, however, that a rapid development has taken place in recent years. Our analysis of

a sample of fifteen national development plans of Latin American countries undertaken for the purpose of this paper has revealed that seven of these dealt with social security in one way or another. In one case (Brazil), social assistance rather than social security was considered; in two cases (Costa Rica and

El Salvador), social security was included in the plan on account of its medical care services, but in four plans (Argentine, Chile, Peru and Uruguay), special chapters were devoted to social security. It must be pointed out that, in the se last four cases, the countries concerned had introduced their social security schemes during the inter-war period.

A detailed analysis of the objectives of these plans will show that, while there are several areas of common concern, for instance, with relation to the protection of rural areas, inclusion of unemployment among the risks covered, preoccupations with pensions benefits or with the investment of reserves, there is hardly a case when the specific planning targets of the four countries coincide.

• United Nations, New York, 1972, Part 1, p. 56.

2 See Marshall Wolfe, op. cit., p. 156.