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Government says it has significantly increased the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) net transfers to Metropolitan Municipal and District Assemblies from 2016-2018.

Minister for Local Government and Rural Development, Hon. Alima Mahama disclosed that, in 2017 a total of GH 663,183,029.70 was transferred to the MMDAs as against GHS461,245,117.86 in 2016 representing a 43.78% increase. She said the total net transfers to the MMDAs in 2018 amounted to GHS 863,500,195.00.

Hajia Alima Mahama who was addressing the media at the Meet the Press series in Accra today said the transfers have resulted in the provision of over 1,200 sub-projects; including educational infrastructure, health, water and sanitation facilities at the local level across the country.

The Minister gave the breakdowns of categories of projects executed as follows: Roads 413, Education 329, Health 115, Water and Sanitation 199, Economic/Market 21, Utilities 5 and other categories of projects executed as 81.

On measures put in place to ensure that MMDAs improve on their Internally Generated Fund (IGF) mobilization, Hajia Alima Mahama said there was a review and issuance of the MMDAs Fee-Fixing Guidelines in 2017. She said the mechanism resulted in several MMDAs identifying new revenue items which hitherto were not in their books.

“These revenue mobilization interventions have resulted in an improvement in IGF of MMDAs. IGF increased by 3% between 2016 and 2017 and by 18% between 2017 and 2018. The implementation of the pragmatic initiatives have increased IGF as a share of MMDAs total revenue from 18% between the periods 2013 – 2016 to 23.51% for the 2017 – 2018 period” she said.

 The Minister said her Ministry has developed a digital platform to simplify the issuance of Business Operating Permits (BOPs), in all the 29 districts in the Greater Accra Region. The automation and digitization, she said, is aimed at improving Ghana’s ranking (currently 114/190) in the ease of doing business.

 “Additionally, a Construction Permit Software has been developed for Accra Metropolitan Assembly and Tema Metropolitan Assembly (TMA) under the Business Enabling Environment Project. In AMA, the software has “gone live” with full access to Users (Developers, Architects, Surveyors, Planners, etc), In TMA, Local Area Network and wireless network  is being installed and configured and will be completed this quarter; and this software will be deployed to other Assemblies, including Tema West, Ayawaso West, Ablekuma West, Krowor and Adentan Municipal Assemblies” she added.