CLGF welcomed today's launch by the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) of a series of training workshops to enhance the resource mobilisation skills of public officials responsible for accounting and reporting.

The training covers financial development topics and targets municipal officers and policy makers from 50 municipalities in the Bahamas, Belize, Dominica, Guyana, St Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago.

Finance and development

This regional project, which is a partnership initiative with CLGF and the CDB, will utilise e-learning modules and virtual workshops covering financial and development topics, such as budgeting for local government, gender equality and social inclusion, and action planning.

The workshops are part of CDB’s regional project on capacity building in municipal finance, which is expected to increase the effectiveness of the expenditure of the targeted municipalities while taking the specific needs of marginalised groups and environmental factors into consideration.

Extending the benefits

CLGF Regional Programme Manager Ms Sandra Singh said: "The training will expose participants to business planning and the preparation of simple procedure manuals. There will also be a requirement for participants to conduct at least one knowledge sharing event on their return to their municipalities to ensure that their colleagues are exposed to the information, materials, knowledge products and tools received. This is expected to contribute towards institutional and behavioural change at the local level and extend the benefits of the training.” 

Dr Darran Newman, Advisor to CDB’s Vice-President of Operations, explained:
“In this way, the regional project will contribute towards improved, inclusive governance practices and enhanced accountability mechanisms, such as planning, public transparency of budgets, customer service contracts for public utilities, adequate public asset management, and clear monitoring of the performance of local governments.”

Follow-up

A follow-up activity will be undertaken with the participants about a year after the training workshops, which will run until early October, to assess and provide follow-up support for the implementation of action plans to be developed during the workshops.