Stoppage of guidelines on Assemblies' levies is a big worry

Accra, Aug. 6, GNA - Government inability to provide guidelines for rate-fixing over the past five years at the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies has resulted in an unfair and inequitable fixing of levies.

Abandoning this constitutional duty, which is supposed to be performed by the Local Government Ministry, is believed to have been the reason why Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies currently fix their own rates, hence the difficulties in meeting revenue targets and misunderstanding with rate payers.

Mr Isaac Tetteh Adjovu, the Accra Metropolitan Assembly Co-ordinating Director made this known on Wednesday, when officials of the Ghana Journalists Association and the Kab Governance Consult, a consultancy firm, met the Assembly to discuss the findings of a recent survey on fee-fixing by the assemblies.

The GJA and Kab Consult conducted the survey in March this year as part of their project to support and promote the micro, small and medium scale enterprises through media advocacy. Mr Adjovu said: "The Ministry by law is supposed to come out with the guidelines to determine the levies, but the guidelines have stopped coming for over five years now.

"The stoppage of the guidelines issuance is a very, very important lapse on the part of the Ministry and since they no longer come, the assemblies are forced to do their own thing," he said.

Mr Adjovu said, the guidelines have helped the assemblies in that past to determine their rates in a fair and equitable manner because it provided the benchmarks for the various categories of rate payers, as well as assist in fashioning out the Assemblies budgets.

Elaborating further the challenge, Mrs Lydia Sackey, the Accra Metro Budget Director said as of now the AMA relies on the rate payers at their associations' level to fix the rates.

She explained that factors such as the prevailing inflation rate, the budget of the assembly in a given year and services rendered by the rate payers, among other things were used in the determination.

Mrs Sackey also admitted that, that way of looking at rates does not guaranteed fairness and equity, which would be largely addressed when Government resumed the issuance of the guidelines.

Giving an overview of the survey report, Mr Kwesi Afriyie-Badu, the Executive Director of Kab Consult said, of the eight assemblies sampled for the exercise, the AMA's performance in terms of consultation with stakeholders, gazetting and technical competence, was fairly impressive. He, however, noted that the basis for fixing rates such as business operating permit by professionals and for small scale business operators in the Metropolis was questionable, since it raised issues of fairness and equity.

Explaining the rationale for the survey, Mr Afriyie-Badu said the intention was to bring to the attention of the policy makers the need to for Assemblies to appreciate the critical role of the micro, small and medium businesses and how opening up to them could impact on revenues generation.

Mr Bright Blewu, the GJA General Secretary said the project, which started in 2006, was given an impetus, when the UN chose the theme of the World Press Freedom Day that year on how the media can contribute to alleviating poverty.

He said a lot had been achieved under the project by way of building the capacity of the media to appreciate and understand the need to support the small businesses which formed about 80 percent of the Ghana's manufacturing sector. 7 Aug. 08