MEGA Local Economic Development Programme Serbia (Programme Design)

For those interested in designing national LED programmes take a look at this one for ideas - Program Components

National-Level Policy Advocacy
Major goal of the National-Level Policy Advocacy Team is to facilitate the improvement of regulatory framework that will be conducive to local economic development (LED).
In order to support regulatory reform and to improve policies related to issuance of different business permits or to property acquisition and disposal, the Policy Advocacy Team:

• Provides technical assistance to key national-level partners in the process of LED related legislative drafting, facilitate stakeholders' input into legislative process and support partners in advocating for adoption of key LED legislation;
• Provides support to the local governments in developing own source revenue and land management policies;
• Provides support to key advocacy partners - the Standing Conference of Towns and Municipalities (SCTM), the National Alliance for Local Economic Developmentⁱ (NALED), and the Republic of Serbia's Commission for Local Governmentⁱ Finances - in their organizational strengthening and enhancement of advocacy capacities.

Through NALED, MEGA brings together civil society organizations, business community, and national and local government representatives to advocate for the policy changes necessary to achieve full economic development potentials of municipalities, tracks important LED legislation, as well as government and donors' incentive programs, examines business-friendliness of municipalities, organizes forums and round-tables where private and public sector exchange their ideas and solutions in order to improve our legal and economic environment.

Municipal Capacity Building for Local Economic Development (LED)
The core of the MEGA program is the Local Economic Development component.  MEGA provides technical assistance, material support and training to participating municipalities to enable them to support the economic development of their communities. 

Primarily, the MEGA LED component works with the participating municipalities to establish or enhance their Offices for Local Economic Development (OLEDs), define their roles and carry out their functions (e.g. promotion and marketing, information dissemination, identification of investment opportunities, etc).  As a part of this effort, MEGA trains the staff of OLEDs and assists the local governments to form mixed private-public economic development advisory commissions.

Secondly, the LED component provides training and technical assistance to assist the local government staff and members of the economic development commissions in creation of comprehensive, community-based Strategic Plans for LED.  For the municipalities which already have LED Strategic Plans, MEGA will assist the local government to review and strengthen the document as needed.  Within this context and following the adoption of LED Strategic Plans, MEGA will also work with participating municipalities on the implementation of specific projects outlined in the strategic plans, such as green fields development, brown fields development, establishment of Business Improvement Districts (BIDs)ⁱ, creation of business incubators, establishment of applied research and technology centers, etc.

Thirdly, MEGA provides technical assistance and facilitates the informatio flow between local governments, the central government institutions and prospective investors by enhancing the quality of promotional materials (including websites), creating investment site-location databases, supporting municipal participation in investor conferences, etc. The ultimate result expected is to attract more investment, create more business opportunities and generate new jobs in local communities in Serbia.

Municipal Capacity Building
The Municipal Capacity Building component, complements and supports the core MEGA assisted LED planning and organizational activities. In a variety of ways, this component aims to help our partner municipalities strengthen their ability to mobilize LED resources from the public and private sectors, and to deploy these resources more effectively in helping to improve the local business climate and grow the local economy. As the participating municipalities vary considerably, the members of the Municipal Capacity Building component tailor training and technical assistance to the needs of each of the MEGA municipalities.

Specifically, the Municipal Capacity Building team is working with partner municipalities:

• To better understand and utilize their capacity for borrowing funds for investment projects;
• To identify and prepare investment projects for debt or grant financing (including commercial bank credits and the ability to access EU funds in the future);
• To improve the operations of Citizen Assistance Centers (CACs) and One-Stop Permitting Centers (OSPCs) to serve the needs of local businesses;
• To strengthen cooperation between municipal urban planning offices and the new OLEDs in the design, implementation and monitoring of economic development projects;
• To educate senior level officials to private-public partnerships (PPPs) and other innovative financing concepts;
• To help municipal governments engage more constructively (and advance local interests) in the privatization of socially-owned companies and the commercialization of surplus military properties;
• To institutionalize multi-year, Capitalⁱ Investmentⁱ Planning,  in part as bridge between the LED Strategic Plan and the annual budget process, and as means of prioritizing investment projects within the constraint of available financial resources;
• To introduce local governments to modern, municipal asset management concepts, both to augment local budget revenues and to make vacant or under-utilized, publicly-owned land and buildings available for private sector use;
• To strengthen the local public procurement process and capture opportunities for local firms to do business with local governments;
• To establish partner relations with municipalities in other transitional Central and South-East European countries as a means to share LED best practices.