Publication: Decentralization in Madagascar
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2004-06
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2004-06
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This paper takes stock of Madagascar's first 10 years of decentralization. As it happened in many other developing countries, particularly in Africa, Madagascar's decentralization process has seen reversals, uncertainties and lack of clarity all along. This explains why Madagascar, despite the experience with decentralization, remains a highly centralized country with only about 3-4 percent of expenditures spent below the center and with very few prerogatives decentralized to the local level. Notwithstanding the structural impediments to decentralization in poor countries, many positive lessons can be drawn from the Madagascar case, which point to the potentials of the decentralization process. This study provides a detailed analysis of local government finances and develops a methodology for measuring local financing needs (local fiscal gap methodology). Based on this analysis, the study argues that a lot can be gained from simplifying administrative arrangements and fiscal relationships. Instead of a full-blown and ambitious decentralization strategy, this book suggests a number of reforms, which would go a long way by making the current structure work better. These reforms include: (1) a full transfer of the (limited) local competencies to commune, particularly local revenue collection; (2) increasing transfers to rural communes so that per capita allocations would be the same across communes-rural and urban; and (3) assigning revenues to one level of government only, except for some very specific types of taxes (such as on natural resources).
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“World Bank. 2004. Decentralization in Madagascar. World Bank Country Study;. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/14921 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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Publication Madagascar : Decentralization(Washington, DC, 2003-11-05)The objective of this decentralization study is to provide analysis and policy advice to the new Malagasy government on how to proceed with the decentralization strategy it inherited from the previous government. The end of the post-crisis emergency recovery period creates the opportunity to correct the weaknesses of the previous strategy while building on the exiting achievements. The paper specifically aims to (i) analyze the institutional and fiscal context of decentralization and (ii) present the resulting challenges for service delivery and financing - with a particular focus on local governments. Benefiting from primary data from several hundred local governments, this study aims at proving recommendations of how to improve the functioning of communes in considering the institutional and fiscal parameters. 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