Edgewater Resort, Rarotonga from 26 - 29 May 2008,
Tanga Morris attended the MDG-based planning, Costing and Budgeting for the Polynesian Countries held at the Edgewater Resort, from 26 - 29 May 2008, while Michelle Aisake attended certain sessions of the workshop that related to poverty.
UNDP Pacific Regional MDG Specialist, Carol Flore-Smereczniak said that, “the workshops focused on policy, planning and budgeting to achieve national priorities and the Millennium Development Goals, and the need for coherence between these. Participants were introduced to a number of sectoral costing tools as a way to enable countries to estimate what it can cost to achieve certain policy choices. The workshop also addressed issues of particular relevance to small islands developing states, such as energy and poverty linkages, disaster risk reduction, the need for gender responsive policies, and so forth”.
Tanga says that, “This is my first MDG Workshop that I have attended and I was amazed at the scope of MDG, much wider than I have expected. I’ve enjoyed the workshop very much especially how MDG is linked to the National Development Plan then to the budgeting process. The costing tools that were introduced was an added bonus which would assist all sectors as a way forward to plan our budget on a medium to long term period in alignment with the MDG goals to sector plans down to the monitoring and evaluation process. It was also a time of learning and sharing of experiences amongst Pacific Islands.
It was also emphasized that in any national planning or when using the costing tools, evidence base data must be used, so this is where/when our National Statistics Office plays an important role in the whole process. Providing up to date data for all players”.