0w2010 01 RESUM EJECUTIVO 03 DEFcarta ang
26/10/10
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Asia Pacific Executive Summary
In the last years, a number of countries of the Asia Pacific Region have seen quite significant changes to the structure and use of local government. In July 2009, the President of Pakistan postponed local elections, reportedly due to the unanimous decision of governors and until the security situation improved throughout the country. In the meantime, local governments became subjects of provincial governments and the governors decided to appoint “non-political” administrators to replace elected mayors and vice mayors. The magistracy system has been revived. As such, the very existence of local government in Pakistan is under debate. Local Government Associations are campaigning to “save the democratic local governments”. In China, the intergovernmental system recently concentrated on promoting economic development and this emphasis has generated a number of noteworthy successes. Given these achievements, Chinese leaders now appear poised to re-focus their decentralization program on delivering quality local public services. The change will be operationalized as part of the government’s renewed attempts to address equity and poverty concerns in the context of its recently initiated program to “build a harmonious society”. In 2003, Japan’s government launched a broad set of “Trinity Reforms”, which it hopes will ease many of the long-standing constraints on local government operations. The overarching goal of the reforms is to provide sub-national governments with more fiscal autonomy: particular objectives focus on reducing sub-national government
reliance on specific purpose transfers from the central government, increasing access to own-source revenues and streamlining the untied equalization grant. It is too early to judge whether these objectives have been achieved.
Blane D. Lewis Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy National University of Singapore
In Indonesia, recent changes to laws envision the eventual decentralization of property tax to the local level. This change has the potential to significantly increase the amount of own-source revenues available to local governments but also portends some daunting administrative challenges. More broadly, the government has begun to outline revisions to its laws on both administrative and fiscal decentralization with a view to again improving the legal framework introduced in 1999.
Bob Searle Consultant, Australia
Cambodia passed an Organic Law on Decentralization and Democratic Development in early 2009 and is now in the process of formulating the implementation plan to establish district and provincial administrations as intermediate tiers between the central government and the communes. In Nepal, the composition of a new Constitution is progressing (with completion due in 2011) which will include a clarification of the roles and responsibilities of the tiers of local government, provide a more secure base for local elected officials, and make fund transfers more transparent and format them in a formula-based manner.
Main issues and challenges for local government finance The main issues and challenges facing intergovernmental systems across countries