Bhutan

Local Governance Support Programme

The Local Governance Support Programme (LGSP) aims at ensuring good governance by strengthening institutional capacity and people's participation and by contributing towards improved service delivery for poverty reduction and realizing MDGs. It also aims at effective and transparent financing mechanism for local government service delivery

In Bhutan, there has been a positive move towards further decentralization and with the transition to constitutional democracy in 2008, the constitution as well as the newly approved Local Government Act of Bhutan 2007 provide for further power and authority to be given to decentralized bodies and elected representatives at local level.

The joint LGSP is the flagship programme in being the first sector approach programme with the government.The LGSP harmonized support to RGoB will be provided to establishment of a full- fledged and effective local governance system in Bhutan. It will provide a strategic platform for government to leverage financial support for improving local level infrastructure and services and build up mechanisms into which other funding partners can pool funds through budget support to finance local government grants nationally and coordinate and program other inputs to support decentralization in Bhutan such as capacity development, logistics, technical cooperation and M&E support

Development partners working in the area of decentralization and local governance including UNDP, UNCDF, Denmark, Austria, and SDC are taking initiative towards greater harmonization and alignment to support this very positive but challenging move towards greater decentralization.

UNDAF Outcome	4: By 2012, institutional capacity and people’s participation strengthened to ensure good governance.
CT Outcome	4.1 Strengthened capacity of local governments to plan, implement and monitor their development progress in pursuit of poverty reduction and MDGs. 4.2 Increased and effective participation of women in particular, and communities in general, in decision making and in development activities 4.3 Local capacity for development & sound financial management enhanced through annual grants and integrated approach at gewog level.
CT Output	4: By 2012, instutional capacity and peoples participation strengthened to ensure good governance
Project Location	Thimphu
Project Duration	July 2008 - June 2013
Budget Outlay	US$1.5M (UNDP); US$ 800,000 (UNCDF); DKK 25M (Denmark); Euros 500,000 (Austria)
Link to Workplan	Click on the icon to download