25-26 June 2010, Batam, Indonesia

  UNITAR, United cities and Local governments (UCLG) and its regional Asia Pacific Section, United cities and Local Governments / Asia Pacific (UCLG/ ASPAC) jointly organized a workshop on Local Governments Finances on 25-26 June 2010 in Batam, Indonesia. This workshop is part of a series of workshops on local finances implemented by the Local Development Programme of UNITAR, thanks to the financial support of the French government.    The workshop focused on decentralization in Asia pacific region and the topic of direct access to finance. The objective was to set up a policy document for the Asia pacific region and to develop concrete tools that could help UCLG - ASPAC build its advocacy strategies and lobbying activities to national and regional institutions.    If the Local government is to operate effectively and efficiently, it must have access to greater levels of own – source funding. This will make local government more answerable to the citizens it represents, give greater capacity to meet their expectation and assist in the achievement of national service delivery goals. Therefore, the policy document made recommendations regarding: transfers and grants from other tiers of governments, access to loans and borrowings to finance economic and social infrastructure, local government autonomy, administrative and financial management, improving local government capacity, improvements to the legal framework.   35 Mayors /local governments’ leaders from the Asia Pacific region (Australia, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Nepal, New Zealand, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam) attended the workshop.