KMA’s debt stock hits over GH¢119m

The total debt stock of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) hit GH¢119,213,333.22 as of December 31, last year.
     
Nearly a-half of the figure – GH¢50,602,874.43 is made up of judgement debt to creditors.
     
Mr. Osei Asibey-Antwi, the Metropolitan Chief Executive (MCE), said what was even more disturbing was the fact that GH¢44,175,586.68 of the judgement debt was incurred during the space of three months – October to December 2016.
    
Addressing a meeting of the assembly in Kumasi, he said the figure was likely to rise.
    
He announced the decision to set up a Special Audit Team to unravel the mysteries surrounding such debts.
    
The KMA would also seek legal opinion including the option of resorting to Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) to deal with all outstanding court cases.
    
Mr. Asibey-Antwi touched on the revenue collection performance of the assembly and said as of December last year, it mobilized GH¢29,377,276.70 in internally generated funds (IGF).
    
This represented 99.2 per cent of the GH¢29,596,267.00, the assembly had targeted to collect.
    
For the first three months of this year, it had raked in GH¢5,793,376.94, representing 16.2 per cent of the GH¢35,668,900.00, it had estimated for the period.      
    
The assembly’s has projected to collect total revenue of GH¢112,075,801.19 in 2017 but had so far done GH¢8,580,646.81, which translates into 7.6 per cent.
    
The MCE, visibly not impressed about the way things were, said they should be doing better than this but for the lack of an apt database capturing all taxable businesses and properties and the absence of robust controls to check evasion and leakages in revenue payments.
    
Added to these, was the collusion of some of the assembly’s workers with unscrupulous contractors and service providers to dupe the assembly.
    
On the way forward, Mr. Asibey-Antwi said, there would be strict enforcement of the public financial management act.
    
He also stated that, any worker found complicit in any act of malfeasance was going to be sanctioned.
   
He vowed to make sure that the business of the assembly was run with high sense of discipline and responsibility from duty bearers.
   
The MCE rallied the assembly members to forge ahead in unity and with renewed sense of commitment, passion and energy, to improve the quality of life of the people in the metropolis.

Source: GNA