Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly to seal leakages in revenue mobilization

The Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) has made significant progress in the battle against the use of fake general counterfoil receipts (GCRs), following the restructuring of its Revenue Unit, Mr Osei Assibey-Antwi, the Metropolitan Chief Executive (MCE), has disclosed.

“Due to the vigilance and monitoring efforts by the Revenue Team and other officers, many fake GCRs have been detected. Disciplinary action has been taken against those staff found complicit in this act,” he told the first ordinary meeting of the first session of the Eighth Assembly, at the Prempeh Assembly Hall, Kumasi.

Besides, the Assembly had also cancelled contracts awarded to outsourced companies found to have engaged in the criminal act of using fake GCRs to collect revenue.

Mr Assibey-Antwi said the matter was reported to the police and that some staff found culpable were arrested while investigations continued.

“Revenue collection has improved significantly as a result of the bold reforms.

“The Chief Accountant put in charge to spearhead these reforms, formed a revenue management team, including four Chartered Accountants.

The team has worked to increase revenue inflows,” the MCE told the Ghana News Agency (GNA), on the sidelines of the programme.

On the financial performance of the KMA for the period 2016 to July 2020, he said a total revenue of more than GH¢261.262 million was mobilized.

Total expenditure for the period under review, he said, was more than GH¢265.4 million.

Mr Assibey-Antwi indicated that the COVID-19 pandemic had dealt a devastating blow to revenue mobilization, especially the component relating to internally-generated funds (IGF).

According to the MCE, from January up to the end of July 2019 financial year, the KMA had collected a total IGF of GH¢13.67 million, however, for the same period in 2020, the Assembly realized GH¢12.09 million.

The difference is the loss of revenue of about GH¢1, 582, 151.27, he explained.

“The lost amount would have been higher but for the increases in revenue collections cumulatively from January to March of 2020 as compared to the same period in 2019,” he said.

He said for April, this year, only 29.27 per cent of revenue was collected as compared to the same period in 2019, due to the lockdown that lasted for three weeks.

“This downward trend in revenue collected continued in May and June 2020,” Mr Assibey-Antwi noted, saying according to financial experts, the effect of COVID-19 was likely to continue until the end of the year.