Mobilizing financial resources for local development: A case study of Techiman and Sunyani Municipalities.
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Date
October, 2010.
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Abstract
Local governance and grass root participation have become an important development paradigm in many developing countries in Africa. Decentralization and local government reforms undertaken in Ghana since 1988 therefore have sought to transfer power and resources from central government to sub national institutions and structures in order to enhance participatory local development. In addition, it is intended to promote good governance and democracy, and improvement in the people’s quality of life through local delivery and management of public infrastructure and social services.
These institutional reforms require the strengthening of local institutions through local resource generation and mobilization towards district development. This has been the focus of the 21 years of the implementation of Ghana’s decentralization programme.
In spite of the successes chalked in the areas of political and administrative decentralization financial decentralization has been lagging with many local government institutions depending on central government financial support for their development activities. MMDAs therefore struggle in their efforts to mobilize local revenue towards their respective development. This situation puts stress on central government budget in executing its development agenda. This study is thus an attempt to examine the capacity of municipal assemblies to generate and mobilize local revenue for development. The study therefore assesses the structure and sources of revenue generation and mobilization at the municipal level. It also examines the prospects and challenges of financial resource mobilization at the municipal level.
A case study approach was adopted for the study with Sunyani and Techiman municipalities as
comparative cases. The study revealed that in both cases 80 percent of the assemblies’ capital
expenditure is funded through central government transfers. Beside, key stakeholders like market
women and property owners are not actively involved in the decision making process of the
assemblies regarding revenue mobilization. The study therefore recommends that the two
assemblies should take steps to diversify their revenue base and also involve local actors in revenue mobilization drives and to strengthen the revenue collection units enough to perform their duties.
Description
A thesis submitted to the School Graduate Studies,
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of in Master of Science on