|
PS optimistic on realisation of MDGs
2006-12-20 09:36:00
By Jane Mkonya
The government says is striving to accelerate domestic revenue mobilisation through tax and administration reforms so as to finance Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) projects.
This was disclosed on Monday by the Permanent Secretary in the Prime Minister’s Office, Tarishi Maimuna, when she was officiating at a seminar on financial capacity building for localization and implementation of MDGs.
She said she was aware that local government authorities were aggressively fighting to collect local resources for financing provision of services and development activities as spelt out in the MDGs.
”But contribution of local communities is vital.
Local people must contribute cash or labour power for financing implementation of the MDGs,” she said.
Maimuna said the government was determined to finance MDGs through a formula-based system of block grants which emphasize on the transfer of resources to local governments commensurate with functional responsibilities assigned to the authorities.
Under the formula-based arrangement, in 2004, the government disbursed grants to local government authorities to address equity and transparency problems.
”Building capacity of local governments has significant impact on the improvement of service delivery and thus easy attainment of MDGs,” observed the PS.
However, local government authorities face serious challenges in the implementation of MDGs, including lack of necessary capacities.
This includes financial resources required to support implementations of the targets.
Other setbacks, according to Maimuna, were lack of capacity to sustain the fiscal decentralization reforms, the current lack of financial management capacities at the village and street levels to facilitate planning, stimulate public participation and realistic planning within a known resource envelop to implement MDGs.
”But implementation of MDGS is a complex undertaking which requires adequate financing and appropriate capacity to implement action plans of the goals,” she said.
The PS called for full participation of all actors backed by the government instruments to push up development programmes as specified in the MDGs.
”Appropriate financing and capacity building required is a must in order to achieve the MDGs,” she said.
|
