How can spending responsibilities and revenue resources be best assigned to the different government layers in different contexts? What strategies can sub-national governments use to optimise their revenues, design fair and effective local tax systems and strengthen their financial management? And how can local budgets effectively respond to citizens’ needs and how can citizens hold their local authorities accountable?
The Hague Academy of Local Governance will deal with these issues in an upcoming (in-person) training course on Fiscal Decentralisation & Local Finance, offered in The Hague from 23 August to 5 September 2023. There is no application deadline, as long as participants manage to arrange their visas on time (if needed).
Experience
The course includes visits to a municipality, a provincial government and the Ministry of Interior in the Netherlands. While visiting the different levels of government, you will understand how fiscal decentralisation is organised in the Netherlands and the fiscal interconnections between these levels of government. Additionally, you will learn about best practices and also about how to overcome bottlenecks in the fiscal decentralisation process. Furthermore, you will engage in analytical exercises, debates and a fun municipal finance quiz. Finally, we will discuss recent experiences with local property tax reforms in Ghana and Palestine, which will give you practical examples to design a local property tax strategy.
Experts contributing to this course include:
Nicholas Travis
Nicholas is an expert on public finance in fragile states. He works as a consultant for the World Bank and has extensive experience in public financial management and fiscal decentralisation for service delivery.
Jennifer Bukhoke
Jennifer is a Technical Advisor on local development finance to the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF). She has more than 15 years of experience in a.o. gender mainstreaming in local finance.
Henri ten Broeke
Henri is a local tax expert at VNG International. He has broad experience with (re)designing and implementing business models and IT solutions for local governments and national tax administrations.
Shireen Titus
Shireen is an expert with over 18 years of experience in the public sector. Her expertise includes public finance, fiscal policy, strategic planning, and good governance, specifically focusing on the local level.
Course details and application
Further course details and application materials are available here.
