Gov’t increases District Assemblies common fund net transfers

The Government has from 2016 to 2018, increased the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) net transfers to the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) by 43.78 per cent, Hajia Alima Mahama, the Minister for Local Government and Rural Development said on Wednesday.

She said the Government, in 2017 transferred a total of GHS663, 183,000 to the MMDAs as against GHS461, 245,117 transferred in 2016.

She said the total net transfers to the MMDAs in 2018 amounted to GHS 863,500,195.00.

Speaking at the meet- the- press series in Accra, Hajia Mahama said the transfers had resulted in the provision of more than 1,200 sub-projects, including some educational infrastructure, health, water and sanitation facilities at the local level across the country.

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

She said a review and issuance of the MMDAs Fee-Fixing Guidelines in 2017 had also resulted in several MMDAs identifying new revenue items which they initially could not foresee, adding that, it was part of measures towards improving their Internally Generated Fund (IGF) mobilization.

She said the revenue mobilisation interventions had resulted in an improvement in IGF of the MMDAs, whose IGF had increased by three per cent from 2016 to 2017 and by 18 per cent from 2017 to 2018.

“The implementation of the pragmatic initiatives have increased IGF as a share of MMDAs total revenue from 18 per cent between the periods of 2013 – 2016 to 23.51 per cent for the 2017 – 2018 period,” she said.