Experiences of the Expenditures of the Decentralised Regional Development Supports in West Transdanubia

Abstract

The decentralisation of regional supports started in 1996 with the pass of the act on regional development and physical planning and the decentralisation to counties of a certain share of regional development sources. The differences in the leve! of socio-economic development of the counties is reflected in the distribution of the funds, but the current amount of these sources is extremely small (about 0,2% in the country) so they are unsuitable for the implementation of strategic príorities in the long term. However these supports assisted to the initiation of the required conditions for a dynamic development of the counties. Nevertheless they considerably contributed to the formation of an EU-compatible institutional and fmancing system of regional development in Hungary. The paper's aim is to present the most important experiences of the expenditure of the regional development funds in county level. Beside some general information on the principle and the regulation of the decentralisation and the distribution of the funds between the counties, we would like to examine the projects supported by the county development councils in West Transdanubia between 1996 and 1999.