This guidance note from UNCDF is about immediate responses to the COVID-19 recommended for local governments. It is advisory and generic and can be adapted to individual circumstances. It is focused on responses that can be implemented in days and weeks, rather than months and years. This fourth edition includes an expanded section on Operational Expenditure Block Grants to accelerate the local COVID-19 emergency response. A later note will cover the early recovery phase.
This version includes a supplement about immediate responses to COVID-19 recommended for local governments through Operational Expenditure Block Grants (OEBGs) and SME economic recovery support. The supplement should be read together with the guidance note. It is advisory and can be adapted to individual circumstances.
The supplement includes generic menus of options for this support that can be approved with consolidated reporting through the UNCDF Dual Key Rapid Response System. The menus are aligned with the World Health Organization’s classification of pandemic phases, which distinguishes between preparedness and early containment phase and an active community transmission phase.
The menus include:
1 Actions for the preparedness phase
2. Actions for the emergency phase
3. Actions for the economic recovery and rebuilding fiscal space phase
These responses are not always sequential and can be carried out simultaneously. However, it is important to group in accordance with the above-listed phases to enable the actions to be checked for specific relevance to COVID-19 and to consolidate reporting to different funders of specific actions carried out by different cities and local governments.
Click here to access the publication on the UNCDF website.
See https://www.uncdf.org/local-development-finance; contact nan.zhang@uncdf.org
for further information on implementation of OEBG and SME support through local government finance
