Decentralization in operations: Comoros and Madagascar

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Decentralization in operations Comoros and
Madagascar
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Political and Fiscal Context
3
World Bank Response
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Comoros Emergency Credit (EERC)
Objective (i) Support the transition out of
the secessionist crisis (ii) mitigate distress
of the poor Management (i) Activities were
determined by the three islands (ii) Ministry
of Plan was implementing agency (iii) Anjouan
managed its own activities Decentralization
(i) Pre-determined allocations by components
(Poverty reduction, decentralization, national
reconciliation) and islands Anjouan 50 Grande
Comore 32 Moheli 18 (ii) The
decentralization was mainly used for the payment
of salary arrears and the rehabilitation of
administrative buildings

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EERC Performance
Outcome (i) Uses of funds produced
largely positive results. (ii)
Country adopted a new constitution Anjouan had
overcome its isolation (iii) New lines
of confrontation emerged in June 2002 after the
election of Union and island governments Credit
Performance (i) Credit was ranked marginally
satisfactory because it reached the best
possible outcome under the difficult
circumstances. (ii) The decentralization
sub-component was rated marginally unsatisfactory
because of the high prevalence of cars and
administrative overheads Lessons (i) Bank can
play an important role in transition out of
crisis (ii) Bank should not overestimate its
role. Decentralization processes are very
complex and, in a crisis context, even more
difficult to implement.

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Madagascar Decentralization ESW
Results (i) Madagascar remains a structurally
centralized country (ii)
Parallelism between deconcentrated and
decentralized agents hampers
service delivery (iii) Local government finance
is marginal but communes are more effective in
revenue collection than deconcentrated
intermediaries

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Madagascar Decentralization ESW

• Recommendations
• The decentralization strategy should focus on
  communes and consider suppressing the regions as
  well as postponing the set-up of provinces
• Communes need to be fully in charge over local
  government affairs
• Communes should be in charge of raising their own
  revenues
• Transfers need to arrive on time
• Transfers should be substantially increased to
  rural communes
• Improve service delivery within the
  deconcentrated framework
• (i) Creation of clear reporting rights between
  statistical services at the province and central
  level
• (ii) Investing in the analysis, treatment and
  verification of data at the province and district
  level