Korle Klottey assembly records growth in revenue

THE Korle Klottey Municipal Assembly (KoKMA) in the Greater Accra Region has posted a 1,463 per cent growth in property rate as of the first quarter ending April 2025.

From GH¢466,568.00 collected as property rate from January to April 2024, for this year within the same period, the assembly said it had collected GH¢7,294,090.00 in property rates. The entire revenue generated from property rate by the assembly last year was GH¢12,355,844.00.

The Municipal Chief Executive of the assembly, Alfred Allotey-Gaisie, describing this as positive, said the over GH¢7 million collected in property rates as of April this year formed part of the GH¢10,434,413.00 that the assembly had raised as internally generated fund (IGF) as of April this year.

Mr Allotey-Gaisie said from January to April 2024, the assembly raised GH¢7,012,413.00 as IGF while for the entire year, they raised GH¢25,398,140. In 2023, the assembly recorded GH¢14,747,648 as IGF.

Mr Allotey-Gaisie, who disclosed this in an interview he had with selected media houses in his office, said their IGF target for this year was GH¢45million. Present was the Municipal Coordinating Director, Emmanuel Baisie.

Revenue growth

He attributed the growth in revenue of the assembly to their decision to digitalise most of their revenue collection, including property rates and business operating permits.

He explained that under this digitalisation, they had developed a local software that allowed all revenue payments to the assembly to be done only electronically either through the banks, mobile money transfers, etc.

He said this had, therefore, blocked revenue leakages that once characterised the old payments in physical cash.

As a result of this growth success, he said, the Local Government Service and the Regional Coordinating Council had asked other metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) in the country to understudy their software to enable them to adopt it.

He said pursuant to this, training of over 40 MMDAs across the country on their software had started and when completed, the KoKMA would install the software for them.

Intention

Throwing light on how the assembly intended to sustain the growth attained, Mr Allotey-Gaisie said they intended to channel the revenue generated into various projects earmarked for the municipality. 

These, he said, included enlarging the drain along the Ringway area, desilting storm drainages within the municipality with the onset of the rains, dredging the Korle Lagoon, renovating most of the public basic schools in the municipality to give them a facelift and enhancing the capacity of the teaching staff through training. 

"We are also looking at enhancing security across the municipality and increasing visibility by installing more street lights. Sanitation is one of the priorities we want to tackle, and the little roads, we can use our IGF to construct.”

"Whatever revenue we are making, we want to channel back into the community. They need to feel the development in order to make it easy for them to pay. If there is rubbish to collect, we will do; if it’s gutters we need to clean, we will do. They should see us using their money to do those things," he said.

Regarding frequent flooding in the municipality, he said they had realised that some structures had been built on watercourses and for those structures, they would demolish them after dialogue with the owners.

Circle beautification 

Mr Allotey-Gaisie announced plans by the assembly to green the inner perimeter of the Kwame Nkrumah Circle by growing grass there and putting a mesh around the area to prevent pedestrians from walking inside.

He said the exercise, which formed part of the assembly's plan to beautify Circle, would also witness the removal of posters that had been indiscriminately posted on the surfaces of almost all the concrete structures there.

The removal of the posters, together with dealing with unauthorised parking and loading in the municipality by commercial drivers, would start in the coming week.

On decongestion, Mr Alottey-Gaisie said together with the assemblies they shared border with, they intended to rid the streets of traders who sold at unauthorised places.