Fiscal Decentralization and the Promotion of Local level Development; a Comparative study of Ghana and Uganda.

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1997-07-07
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Over the last decade, the governments of both Ghana and Uganda have demonstrated their commitment to the devolution of political and administrative authority to the districts as a means of promoting effective community participation in local development. In addition, efforts have been made to transfer the necessary financial resources to local governments to promote their role in local level development. In Ghana, these efforts culminated into the enactment of the local government Act of 1993, Act 462 and the drafting of Chapter 20 of the 1992 constitution. In Uganda, these efforts resulted into the enactment of the local government (Resistance Councils) Statute of 1993. These policies aim at giving local governments the power to mobilise and/or allocate the financial resources spent within their jurisdictions. However, much as the decentralisation policies in both countries provide for an effective transfer of financial resources, the measures put in place to affect this transfer do not grant the local governments units substantial control over them. As a result, the local governments have little control over the financial resources that they need to perform the devolved functions. To investigate this problem, the case study approach was adopted. Two districts, Atebubu in Ghana and Iganga in Uganda, were chosen. Questionnaires were administered and interviews held with government officials. References were also made to both published and unpublished literature related to fiscal decentralisation. It was established in the course of this study that although some progress had been made towards strengthening local fiscal autonomy, a lot still remains to be done. Assigned sources of revenue were found to be unstable and mostly unproductive in both Ghana and Uganda. In Ghana, the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) is restricted to development projects within specified sectors and the budgetary procedure still leaves most of the financial decision-making powers centralised.
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A thesis submitted to the Board of Postgraduate Studies, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the award of the Degree of Master of Science in Development Planning and Management, 1997
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