Matadi, 9 November 2012 - A training of trainer's workshop on a law regulating public finances started in Matadi, capital of Bas-Congo province on 19 November 2012. The Coordinator of the United Nations Joint Office in this province, Hendrik Bruyn, presided over the opening session, on behalf of the Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Moustapha Soumaré.

The workshop aims at setting up a team of experts responsible for ensuring wide dissemination of major innovations introduced by the law on public finances, especially with regard to budgetary management. In particular, the expert team will be responsible for continued transfer of the knowledge acquired through the workshop to parliamentarians and members of civil society organizations at the local level, in the context of public governance decentralization.

Organized by the Comité d'orientation de la Réforme des Finances publiques (COREF, Steering Committee on Public Finance Reform ), the workshop is receiving technical and financial support from UNDP as part of this agency's Decentralization and Local Development Support Programme. The participants in this three-day workshop include delegates from Kinshasa as well as from Equateur, Kasai Oriental and Bas-Congo provinces.

Mainouna Traoré/MONUSCO