The Mayor of Accra, Alfred Oko Vanderpuye, is advocating for an increase in property rates in the country.
The mayor said this in an interview with Citi News, after he delivered a lecture at the College of Basic and Applied Sciences of the University of Ghana.
He said the current amounts paid as property rates are not enough to help Municipal, Metropolitan and District Assemblies (MMDAs) to undertake their projects.
“The time has come for us to undertake a constitutional review to change that formula. If we change that formula now and we increase it by a percentage that is conducive and in line with today’s economic challenges, the MMDAs will have all the money they need in order to build,” he said.
Oko Vanderpuye also said that Government’s common fund and subventions are not enough for the MMDAs to operate effectively.
“The MMDAs have to collect money, and have to depend on government’s common fund and other subventions that I think we don’t need. I believe that if we do this, we will get the money that we need. Those two activities alone will change the environment for all of us, because we would have the resources that we need.” On February 20, Finance Minister Seth Terkper, also complained on Twitter that the property tax system had become weak.
“I was an assembly man for 8 yrs. Our property tax system has become weak, especially areas with commercial properties. We need to fix that,” he said in the tweet.
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