Abstract
Central governments recognize the key role played by local governments in the developmental agenda of these local areas, especially the effort at generating sufficient revenue locally to fund its own projects and programs. Ensuring effectiveness in decentralization calls for sufficient financial resources to help run the administrative machinery and foster local-level development. The study set out to examine the main challenges affecting local revenue mobilization in Ghana using the experience of three selected districts. To understand these key challenges, this study adopted the case study design to select three administrative assemblies in Ghana. The study found many delays in releasing funds from the central government in terms of releases, poor IGF mobilization affecting operationalization of the district budgets, and ability to carry out socio-economic and infrastructural projects. The study recommends that a PPP arrangement for revenue mobilization should be structured to benefit the Assembly.
Highlights
Decentralisation has been pursued in most developing countries to foster political, social, and economic transformation and the overall development of localities. Akudugu (2012) contends that "decentralisation has been pursued to bring governance and development decision-making process closer to the ordinary citizen at the sub-national level" (p. 22)
The study set out to examine the main challenges affecting local revenue mobilization in Ghana using the experience of three selected districts
This paper examines the challenge of local revenue mobilization and mechanisms for enhancing adequate IGF pool for local governments in Ghana to optimize the effective implementation of the composite budgeting system since internal revenue items remain paramount
Summary
Decentralisation has been pursued in most developing countries to foster political, social, and economic transformation and the overall development of localities. Akudugu (2012) contends that "decentralisation has been pursued to bring governance and development decision-making process closer to the ordinary citizen at the sub-national level" (p. 22). The low level of internally generated funds of Local governments makes them overly dependent on external sources to finance most of their expenditure items This high degree of dependence could affect the autonomy of MMDAs and undermine their decision-making power or authority. The point has been reiterated by Bailey (1999) that local autonomy would be severely limited if the central government could control all the sources of revenue for each local government, thereby controlling the spending of individual authorities This suggests that MMDAs need to put in adequate mechanisms to raise the capacities of their revenue management teams to raise the required financial resources to carry out the development required by the people. The paper is organized into five main sections; beyond this introduction, section two entails a brief conceptual overview and framework; section three presents study methodology, procedures, and data sources; section four analyses and discusses data, while section five presents conclusions and recommendations
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