Planning And Budgeting: Reports On People’s Finance And Local Development Financing

The Asia Foundation launched two research papers relating People’s Finance and Local Development on Wednesday.

These research papers were named “Where Top-Down Meets Bottom-Up: Planning and Budgeting in Myanmar” and “Financing Local Development in Myanmar: Arrangements, Outcomes and Options for Improvement” and they will provide options to improve government’s financing in community development.

Country Representative, The Asia Foundation, Matthew B. Arnold said “The main goal of the report today is to talk about how planning and budgeting happens at the local level. So, what we really interested in is how the government using public financing at local levels of government, so especially at the township level and at the ward and village track levels. Because we would like to improve and support the government to have more public involvement and how public financing are use here in Myanmar to support community development.”

According to the Asia Foundation, these research papers will be financial assistance and support the use of public financing in Myanmar in implementing community development.  

Country Representative, The Asia Foundation, Matthew B. Arnold said “The other thing that we are very much interested in is how the State/Region government’s finance local development. So, currently a lot of spending and the local development comes from the Union Government but we are very interested in how can we support state/region governments to have reforms where they can also contribute increasing amounts of financial support for local development.”

The research papers based on the field studies in 10 townships of Rakhine, Chin and Kayin states focusing on the four sectors of education, electricity, road and rural development.

The officials also shared the findings of research papers including budget transparency, community involvement, planning and budgeting processes and further development projects.