Speaking by live video link from New York on Tursday 29 March to delegates at the 2007 Commonwealth Local Government Conference, guest speaker Jeffrey Sachs said that local government is essential in providing the important things of life - such as basic water and sanitation, jobs, healthcare, schools, roads - and that empowerment of local people to get this done is absolutely central to meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
He outlined three main areas through which local governemnt can make a difference:
- provision of public services such as education, heath, environmental management. He said that in most countries these were seen as public rather than private services;
- infrastructure - not just roads and power, but inclreasiingly providing good telecommunications such as broadband internet. He said that these core parts of infrastructure could be provided either by public or private sector;
- promoting the private sector economy; though the private sector is the engine for growth he said that local government can support this by ensuring a skilled and educated workforce, the necessary infrastructure, and by having an economic strategy that understands the needs of business.
He stressed that in many countries local government has no where near the budget it needs to do all these things and that one of the big challenges is to close the gap between what local government needs to do and what it has the funds to do. He said that in many developing countries, it is impossible for local governemnt to raise money through taxes and this is one area where development money can help support communities. He called on the better-off countries to ppedge 0.7% of their GDP for international development work.
"Local government knows what to do but cannot do it unless we give practical help in the three areas," he said. |
