Round Table: Regional Conference on Fiscal and Functional Decentralization of a Capital City
PALGO Center organized Regional Conference on Fiscal and Functional Decentralization of a Capital City, with a special consideration of the Cities of Belgrade, Sarajevo and Skopje on May 23rd, 2006 in Best Western Hotel, Belgrade.
The Conference was organized in cooperation with OSI/LGI from Budapest, the Fiscal Decentralization Initiative (FDI) and with the support of USAID’s Serbia Local Government Reform Program (SLGRP). The Technical Conference gathered experts from Serbia, Macedonia, BiH and Hungary, representatives from the central government, local self-government and NGO sector.
The focal points of the presentations and the discussions were related to improving intergovernmental fiscal and functional relations between City and its municipalities/districts. Another emphasized issue was the adequate model for financing city municipalities.
At this moment 17 urban/metropolitan and suburban municipalities of the City of Belgrade are being financed by the Annual Decision on Financing Local Governments. The Decision itself is being adopted without a clear and transparent methodology resulting in inability of foreseeing the income of the city municipalities as well as their discrepancy in their finances. Those discrepancies in financial capacities amount, in some cases, over 6 times.
Considering that the Law on self-government of the Republic of Serbia (2002) projected the obligation of passing the Law on the City of Belgrade (which never happened), we think that such law should have precise clauses about the distribution of competencies and a clear method of financing the city urban and suburban municipalities. There must be a clear division of functions and responsibilities between the City and city municipalities based on a list of competencies of the self-governing units. For each of the competencies there has to be assessment of whether it is more efficient to exercise them at the City level or at the level of city municipality. According to the competence distribution determination there must be an adequate budget that would provide the fulfilling the assigned competencies.
Some of the solutions for the effective and functional decentralization presented at the Conference will soon be available on this web page.
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