By K. NANCOO-RUSSELL

Freeport News Reporter

krystal@nasguard.com

The Our Lucaya Convention Centre was buzzing with excitement yesterday as the first sessions of the Commonwealth Local Government Conference got underway with a bevy of dynamic speakers.

By 9:30 a.m., delegates were already seated and listening attentively to presentations by several officials, including Jamaica's Minister of State for Local Government Robert Montague; the president of Nigeria's Association of Local Governments Ibrahim Jalo Waziri, the President of the Australian Local Government Association Councillor Geoff Lake; and Canada's Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities John Baird.

Minister of State for Lands and Local Government Byran Woodside told The Freeport News that he felt the conference has been quite successful so far.

"It's going extremely well and I'm most pleased with yesterday's opening. The highlight of the opening was the young people of grand Bahama who comprised the Grand Bahama Youth Choir, and they gave a terrific performance," he said.

"As far as the working aspect of the conference, we are off to a wonderful start."

Woodside pointed out this is the first time the CLGF conference is being held in the Americas and the Caribbean region and said it is a proud moment for The Bahamas.

During the sessions, Winston Cox, executive director of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) and the morning's keynote speaker, addressed the issue of the role of the IADB in supporting local service delivery.

Cox noted that sustainable and equitable growth within local government systems depends on the efficiency of public policies.

Experience has led the organization to conclude, he added, that without public policies that are fiscally responsible and sustainable, efforts for the development of production and the reduction of poverty will be undermined, he said.

Strengthening accountability mechanisms at both the national and sub-national level, he furthered, provides incentives for efficiency in management and can provide the best preventative measures against fiscal imbalances.

Executive secretary of the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) David Morrison, the keynote speaker for the afternoon session, spoke about how capacity building can strengthen the performance of local governments.

Morrison described the UNCDF's capital assistance mandate, explaining that that funding can serve as a supplementary source of capital for lesser developed countries as they seek to achieve their millennium development goals.

"We do this by focusing on two areas on intervention... micro-finance... and decentralization and local development," he explained, adding that in 2008 alone, the bank supported 649 different local governments, 70 percent of which were in Africa.

"Essentially, we're in the business of providing support to the entire system of local government... The overall goal is to improve governance, basic service delivery and infrastructure at the local level, usually in rural areas, but we do so in ways that are deliberately designed to try to inform the larger national agenda on decentralization and local government."

Morrison explained that the UNCDF usually begins by providing technical assistance, training, capacity building directly to local government.

"The technical assistance is then paired with capital assistance in the form of unearmarked block grants, put directly at the disposal of local governments and allocated according to local government priorities," he said.

"At the request of local governments, these block grants are often performance based... This amounts to a learning by doing approach... Our experience has shown that the very best way of building capacities is to put real resources at the disposal of local government so that they can learn their jobs by doing their jobs."

Following Morrison's address, delegates were divided into working groups for the rest of the afternoon and later were taken to Taino Beach for a traditional Bahamian fish fry.