UNCDF Programme Officers Workshop on Fiscal Decentralization
Economic development experts around the world recognize that efforts to encourage economic growth and reduce poverty in developing countries are more effective when people have a greater say in how their local institutions and resulting services — schools, hospitals and roads — are developed and managed. The United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) provides grants and technical assistance to support the decentralization and democratization of development planning and financing. In so doing, that assistance also supports the transfer of power from central to local government and onwards to community-based organizations and individual citizens.
However, in order for real participatory development to take place, local governments need to be allowed and encouraged to play a pivotal role in ensuring the provision of local government services. For this, local authorities need to be empowered by their national governments through, for example, greater access to resources. The process in which the system of fiscal relations between different levels of government is reformed to accommodate a degree of local fiscal self-governance is known as fiscal decentralization.
In order for Programme Officers to aquire a deeper understanding of the dimensions of fiscal decentralization reform, UNCDF teamed up with the Andrew Young School to provide a three-day workshop on fiscal decentralization issues for its programme officers. A true collaborative effort between UNCDF and the Andrew Young School, the decentralization workshop was part of a week-long training program which blended training on key decentralization issues with discussions on the integration of fiscal decentralization reform into the policy impact and replication strategy of UNCDF. The fiscal decentralization workshop, held in Bangkok, Thailand in October 2001, was facilitated by Dr. Jamie Boex as well as a number of senior UNCDF experts.
Support from UNCDF further allowed the International Studies Program to upgrade the learning materials for the online module Principles of Fiscal Decentralization. In addition to key background readings, the module now contains over two hours of streaming lecture presentations on a variety of fiscal decentralization topics. All training materials used in the workshop -including readings, presentation slides and select audio and video presentations- continue to available to UNCDF officers on the UNCDF Intranet.
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| Project: | UNCDF Programme Officers Workshop on Fiscal Decentralization |
| Date: | October 2001 |
| Project Director: | Prof. Jorge Martinez-Vazquez |
| Lead Facilitator: | Dr. Jamie Boex |
| Location: | Bangkok, Thailand |
| Contractor/Donor: | UNCDF |
