As part of our strategic and selective engagement in policy processes, the Policy Forum’s Local Government Working Group (LGWG) together with KEPA and the Embassy of Finland, on the 27th of August 2009 organised a one-day dialogue on fostering local democracy in Tanzania.
Invited guests included government officials, civil society and development partners who all came together to take stock of various interventions aimed at improving public participation in governance and promoting accountability at the Local Government levels. The event was also an opportunity for stakeholders to give each other updates on the challenges faced and share lessons learned in specific areas such as Public Expenditure Tracking Systems (PETS), advocacy in public access to planning and budgetary information and the dialogue structure in the Local Government Reform Programme (LGRP), MKUKUTA and General Budget Support (GBS) reviews.
On the issue of Public Expenditure Tracking Systems, it was generally agreed that although there was a lot of progress in getting different civil society organisations to introduce PETS in many areas at the LGA level, there still existed many challenges such as the difficulty in standardising PETS exercises, accessing information from authorities, having the tool fully institutionalised by the PMO-RALG, and adequately making use of PETS results.
Although several CSO representatives felt public access to planning and budgetary information was hard to come by, they acknowledged improvements in the system to make such information available. It was noted in particular that the Controller and Auditor General’s (CAG) reports are more publicly accessible today and released in a timelier manner. The question remained, however, whether the recommendations made in the CAG reports are acted upon by government as required by law and whether there were adequate moves to increase the number of value for money reports.
It was also reported that parliamentary oversight had improved through the work done by the Public Authorities Accounts Committee (PAAC) and the Local Authorities Accounts Committee (LAAC). Hon. John Cheyo (MP) who is chair of the PAAC said that his committee has made particular effort in assessing value for money when tracking government expenditure with much emphasis on the roads sector where they have witnessed numerous shortcomings.
On the dialogue structure, it was felt that improvements have been seen over the years despite civil society dissatisfaction with the process. It was emphasised that it was important for stakeholders to continue to have honest discussions of what is working and what is not with full recognition that development issues are complex and to solve the underlying problems requires a lot of concerted and integrated efforts from all stakeholders. From the perspective of the Development Partners, there was confidence that the Government of Tanzania could spearhead its own development agenda and that its institutions of accountability were strong enough to warrant DPs’ General Budget Support to Tanzania.
A full report on the dialogue session will be available on this website shortly.