Launch of the study on the state of local finance at the global level

The UCLG Committee on Local Finance for Development, in partnership with the OECD, is undertaking an assessment of the state of local governments’ finance all over the world. This study aims at gathering, at the global level, the comparative statistical data related to the state of local finances of local governments.
 
Local Government financing is one of the main challenges for the successful implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, and will be prominent in the debates to be held on the international scene this year. In order to seize the opportunities provided by the conference on Financing for Development (Addis Ababa, July 2015), the Special Summit on Sustainable Development (New York, September 2015), and the United Nations Climate Change Conference (Paris, December 2015), UCLG will bring recommendations in favor of fiscal decentralization to the attention of central governments and international partners. In this respect, our advocacy work would have more weight if it were based on the most reliable and complete data possible.
 
This study will enable us to provide comparative data at the global scale, which in turn can serve as a tool for the analysis and positioning of countries in terms of institutional organization and fiscal decentralization, thereby enriching the inputs of local and national stakeholders on the reforms to be undertaken.

Further, this study heralds a project of global observatory on local finance, which will constitute a crucial tool available to UCLG members for the follow-up of decentralization.

Source: UCLG Committee on Local Finance for Development