AMA reviews property rates

The Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) has reviewed property rates for all properties in the metropolis. AMA boss, Mr. Stanley Nii Adjiri Blankson said at a ceremony to introduce the new rates that “the review was to enable the Assembly generate the necessary revenue to develop the city of Accra.”

He added that property evaluation was last done in 1988 which implies that properties completed after 1988 were not captured in the valuation list. An indexation of these values was done in 1995 but could not completely solve the problem of operating on old values.

The AMA boss says it is against this background that the Assembly decided to undertake a comprehensive exercise to revalue all properties to capture properties that were completed after 1988.

Under the new property rate bills, areas considered first class will be required to pay a minimum rate of GH¢50 or 500,000 cedis pr 50GHC while low class areas will pay a minimum rate of GH¢8 eighty thousand cedis.

The AMA which was assisted by the Land Valuation Board and eight private companies to complete this revaluation exercise at a cost of GH¢1,320,000 (13.2 bn) said the number of rate-able properties have increased from 70,732 to 119,850.

This means total rateable values have increased from about 2.5 trillion cedis to about 32.1 trillion cedis putting the collectable rates to 56 billon cedis.

In line with private sector participation, eight private companies have been contracted to collect the rates for this year. The companies will bear identity cards with their company logos as well as the logo of the Assembly.

The AMA boss has therefore, appealed to all property owners or their agents in the Accra metropolis to cooperate with the collection agents to enable the AMA derive the necessary revenue to support its development agenda. h