Decentralisation process chalks up success

Ghana has chalked up tremendous successes in the decentralisation process through the implementation of composite budgeting and the transfer of the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF).

The introduction of the District Development Facility (DDF) and the Urban Development Grant (UDG) have also been identified as contributing to this success.

The Deputy Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Mr Emmanuel Kwadwo Agyekum, stated this at an internally generated fund (IGF) consultative zonal conference in Kumasi.

He said views were being solicited from stakeholders who attended the conference to enable both his ministry and that of Finance and Economic Planning to develop a comprehensive framework to guide the implementation efforts of the IGF.

He expressed worry that in spite of the fact that IGF formed an integral part of local government finances, IGF as a percentage of total revenue of most metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) was nothing to be proud of.

The reason for the relatively low percentage of IGF, to him, was that the landscape was plagued with structural, administrative and systematic inefficiencies which undermined the ability of MMDAs to fully optimise the opportunities for realising revenues available to them.

He, however, called on the participants to pay attention to the administrative constraints affecting IGF mobilisation, utilisation and management at the various MMDAs.

He identified one of the key challenges bedevilling the MMDAs as weak leadership.

The outgone Ashanti Regional Minister, Mr Eric Opoku, said it was necessary to deepen knowledge on revenue generation at the MMDAs because mobilisation played an important role in the growth of the assemblies.

He advised the participants to recommend and adopt strategies which would go a long way to improve assemblies' revenue generation to enable them (the MMDAs) to provide public goods and services needed to improve the lives of the people.

To complement the efforts of government, other stakeholders, including civil society groups and development partners, have supported the IGF operations of MMDAs.

The introduction of IGF-related indicators in the Functional Organisational Assessment Tool (FOAT), target setting for MMDAs through the composite budgeting process, development of guidelines for rate-fixing and street-naming and property-addressing exercises linked to the IGF are some of the reforms initiated to enhance the revenue-generation performance of MMDAs over the years.