Governance and Economic Growth: Focus Areas
Financing Service Delivery
Local governments and service delivery units generate revenue through user fees, taxes, and transfers. Design, implementation, and evaluation of fee-for-service systems, including determination of willingness and ability to pay, are integral parts of the services RTI provides.
We analyze financing strategies to help governments determine whether to rely on transfers, fees for service, debt, or own-source taxes. RTI has provided these types of analyses of education, water services, municipal waste, and other issues in Bulgaria, Indonesia, Russia, and South Africa.
RTI also helps national governments design and implement frameworks that allow local governments to borrow prudently from their own capital markets. This assistance involves creation of regulatory and prudential frameworks and agencies, supervision of local governments by national governments, and training of local government officials.
Last, RTI develops models that help local governments assess their own financial situation and that help national governments evaluate policies that impact subnational governments and service delivery. These models allow municipalities to assess their debt capacity, financing needs, and impacts of recurrent costs created by infrastructural investments, and they help national governments understand the impacts of policies and standards. RTI has built and applied such models in Bulgaria, Indonesia, Poland, Russia, Tunisia, and Ukraine.
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