Revenue generation efforts of Bolgatanga Municipal Assembly in shambles

The Bolgatanga Municipality lost GH¢4,440,000 in 2011 due to the Assembly’s inability to fully carry out its plans to move traders from a temporal market to the renovated old market.

The loss was as a result of the refusal of traders to pay their daily tolls and fees to the Assembly.

Revenue expected to accrue from monthly mobilization is estimated at GH¢370,000, a mark set when the assembly’s taskforce enhanced revenue collection last March.

Mr Gandaa Mathias Asokiyine, Assemblyman of Kalbio Electoral Area and Conveyor of the Finance sub-committee, in an interview with the GNA in Bolgatanga, said for more than one year, the Municipality had not mobilized appreciable revenue from market tolls and this according to some Assembly members was affecting the revenue base of the Assembly.

Mr Asokiyine said everything was in limbo because the Assembly could not take its taxes, tolls and operating fees.

Last year, the Bolgatanga “market traders” expressed their grievances to the assembly over the separate location of the food market.

As a result, many traders who moved back from the renovated market to the new market, complained about poor patronage and blamed it on the fact that the food market which was “jewel in the crown” of the market was still based in the new market.

According to Mr Asokiyine, much of the revenue which was supposed to come from market tolls had not been mobilized over time because traders operating in the renovated market refused to pay and saying until all traders from the new market returned to the market, they would not pay.

He also blamed poor supervision, monitoring, lack of transparency and poor performance of revenue collectors for poor tax collection.

He said the Assembly also encountered challenges in the area of exit fees charges saying that trucks carrying produce leaving the Municipality evade fees because they move in the night when revenue collectors are far asleep.

Source: GNA