A Study on the Financial Conditions of Municipalities for Integrated Coastal Management

Abstract

ABSTRACT : Many coastal areas have been artificialized as a result of coastal development works that proceed without any systematic planning due to the government’s vertically-structured administration. However, since the decentralization policy was established in 2000, favorable conditions have gradually occurred, enabling local governments to play a major role in the integrated utilization and conservation of coastal areas. And from this viewpoint, understanding the features of coastal municipalities including their financials is very important for implementing ICM. But statistics that indicate the geographical features of such municipalities are not available. So, this study will describe the basic geographical features of coastal municipalities using GIS. Based on financial data on all municipalities made public by the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry, the financial data on coastal municipalities was extracted with GIS. Through the data, it became clear that fixed asset tax revenue from coastal facilities such as major ports and factories was the major source of revenue for the general account budget of coastal municipalities. In addition, this study pointed out the importance of the shifting of tax revenues from the national government to the municipalities that do not possess coastal facilities, such as major ports and factories.