By Staff writer, in Accra, Ghana
METROPOLITAN, Municipal, and District Assemblies (MMDAs) in Ghana have come under the spotlight after it merged have only released the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) allocated for the last quarter of 2013.
This invariably means that development projects that were penciled to be undertaken during that quarter could not come to fruition.
It is therefore expected that funds for the first, second, and third quarters of this year will face similar delays, a setback economists and development experts said did not augur well for the socio-economic development of the country.
Renowned economist at the University of Ghana, Emmanuel Nii Abbey, described as “unfortunate.”
He questioned how the assemblies amid the delays in releasing the funds.
He therefore appealed to the authorities as a matter of urgency to speed up the release of funds to the MMDAs to execute their projects.
Abbey also urged the government be proactive in providing funds for the assemblies and other statutory bodies to enable them perform satisfactorily.
In an interview with African Eye News, he said various MMDAs should strengthen their internally generating fund efforts to wean off from depending on the government.
The DACF which is a pool of resources created under section 252 of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana has therefore been misapplied by the government and managers of the fund.
The fund is a minimum of 5 percent of the national revenue set aside to be shared among all MMDAs in Ghana with a formula approved by Parliament.
The delay in the disbursement of DACF coincides with the government’s provisional end-year fiscal data for 2013 indicate that both revenue and expenditure were below their respective targets for the year.
“The shortfall in total revenue and grants was partly as a result of low disbursement of grants from our development partners and, mainly due to the lower than anticipated performance of domestic revenue,” said Minister of Finance, Seth Terkper.
-African Eye News
