Civil Society Organization Foundation for Security and Development in Africa (FOSDA) is warning that Ghana risks continuous revenue leakages if Assemblies fail to catch up with the Digital Revenue Mobilization revolution.

Between 2014 and 2019, Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies were able to collect 64% of their projected Internally Generated Funds.

Apart from the shortfall, the Auditor General’s report continues to record huge sums of revenues unaccounted for with revenue leakages in 2019 alone hitting over a million cedis.

This headlined an OXFAM-funded research in which the Foundation for Security and Development in Africa surveyed outflows of over 700 youthful entrepreneurs and the revenue collection systems of MMDAs.

The research pointed out that while some 45% of entrepreneurs were on the path to full digitization after COVID 19 pressures, only 41 out of the 261 Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies had automated their revenue mobilization operations.

Programs Manager Solomon Okai pointed out that there was clear evidence that all Assemblies that had embraced digitization in their revenue mobilization operations had chalked significant appreciation in their annual collections.

He told Ultimate News, “From the studies, we have done, 45% of youth businesses are taking steps to digitize their businesses and what this means for the MMDAs is that when they digitize, they will be able to collect more and we have examples from Shama, Tema and so on to prove this.”

A planning officer with the Sunyani Municipal Assembly Samuel Kofi Adabuzo welcomed the digitization agenda as a potent platform for assemblies to monitor revenue collectors and plug revenue leakages and corruption in the system.

“It is very important that we go digital because it could also avoid leakages in the system especially where the revenue collector can take days before they bring our returns to the assembly,” he observed.

Deputy Director for the Techiman Municipal Assembly Joseph Frimpong however warned that untill the MMDAs eschewed partisanship and cronyism, any gains of digitalization will be eroded.

He stated: “If we implement a Digitized revenue management system, and we don’t play politics with defaulters, our revenue mobilization is going to go up to benefit the country,”
According to the International Growth Centre, Revenue Mobilization in Ghana’s local government will be significantly enhanced by as much as 83% if digital solutions are properly adopted and utilized.

Source: Ultimate News, Kasapa FM