This document provides a broad and in-depth look at the supply and demand for financial services in Fiji and the best opportunities to bring more Fijians into the financial system. It is a “one-stop-shop” approach to the current state of financial inclusion in Fiji.

The publication focuses on Africa and the specific situation of food insecurity for millions of African women and men. In fact, some of its observations and recommendations are also pertinent in other contexts worldwide. The book primarily aims at stimulating further exchange and debate within the UN system and among our development partners and our national government counterparts. Its main message is that democratic processes, public reforms, fiscal measures and economic growth can be sustainable only if they do secure the livelihoods of millions of poor people, particularly in terms of reducing their vulnerability to food crises.

This book is designed to address the challenges of Performance Budgeting in support of the Millennium Development Goals and in particular, how it applies to development issues in the Least Developed Countries. The United Nations Capital Development Fund supports the work of local governments in LDCs to plan, prioritize, implement and finance socio-economic infrastructure investments. UNCDF’s approach emphasizes achieving sustainability in the local development process through requiring the local planning, budgeting, management, andmonitoring of public expenditures.

This Guide is intended as a contribution to addressing how to improve delivery of basic public infrastructure and related services. Over the past decade UNCDF has built up a portfolio of Local Development Programmes in the LDCs, primarily in Africa and Asia. Although these LDPs operate in very different national contexts, they all embody a common strategy: they aim to promote more effective, efficient, equitable and accountable infrastructure and service delivery through rural local governments, by twinning innovations in funding mechanisms with other “capacity development” innovations in planning, budgeting, delivery and accountability arrangements.