Adenta contracts Revnet Limited to provide revenue management solution

The Adentan Municipal Assembly (AdMA) has contracted Revnet Limited, a Ghanaian IT Service Provider Company to tailor a revenue tracking, monitoring and collection management service that would meet the Assembly’s requirements in a least-cost, low risk and most responsive manner.

In this vein, with effect from January 2011, people within the Municipality would no longer pay monies to neither the Assembly’s Revenue Collectors nor Revenue Commission Collectors but would pay through an electronic banking system that would be directed by the Assembly.

The decision to engage Revnet to implement the Electronic Banking System-Revenue Cycle Monitoring Service (EBS-RCMS) was arrived following an observation over they past that the monies paid to the Assembly was not a true reflection of what had been collected.

“Revenue collection has not been very encouraging. Both permanent and commission ones have not lived up to expectation. Some of them do not pay back to the Assembly what they collected and so there was no need to encourage them to continue with the work,” lamented Kakra Nubyl Vanlare, Municipal Chief Executive of AdMA.

“When I took over the administration of the Assembly, there were a lot of leakages in the revenue generation and based on some measures that were put in place, some of the leakages were stopped and hence, the revenue has gone up,” she stressed.

The service, when implemented would achieve the Assembly’s objectives of increasing its Internally Generated Funds (IGF) and thereby reduce the Assembly’s reliance on disbursements from the District Assembly Common Fund (DACF) and for that matter, the implementation of a wider range of quality services to the Adentan Municipality.

She said based on that, management after almost a year’s investigations, reviews, negotiations and consultations with other Assemblies that had already been hooked unto the Revnet EBS-RCMS, therefore, decided to give the contract to the revenue contractor to do that on behalf of the Assembly.

Available information has revealed that so far, the Cape Coast, Shama and Takoradi Assemblies have been hooked unto the system and their revenue generations continue to increase more than double.

“What this means is that the contractor is given a target within a year. We are expecting this based on what we know we can collect and of course their commission would be taken from it. We will not do it just for the sake of doing it; the auditors would be monitoring it; we have the data and we will be supplying them and monies would be paid into the bank by the payers. It is not money that would move from one hand to the other, it is electronic,” Ms Vanlare emphasized.

She added: “We have seen it and tried it and we believe that it would work. We know that some Assemblies that have hooked unto that are making giant strides in their revenue generation, leading to the execution of a number of development projects.”

The MCE said some of the immediate term benefits of the implemented service would be to ensure that the rate-payer’s payments are well receipted and kept safe and secure; automate the process of collecting rates to ensure improved productivity; have a comprehensive database of properties, businesses and other ratable assets for the Assembly’s budget and planning.

Other benefits include to eliminate collection challenges such as evasion, collusion with collectors, mistakes, among others; assist in the identification of fraudulent debit, diversion of funds and excess charges on the Assembly’s account; establish interconnectivity among stakeholders (collectors, participating banks, Assembly and Revnet); and to identify areas requiring improvements to be addressed in the short, medium and long term in the Assembly’s IGF operations.

Ms Vanlare added that the longer-term benefits would include the ability of AdMA to positively position itself in the medium-term to take advantage of funding packages on offer by primary and secondary financial institutions to undertake development projects that would enhance the quality of life for the people.

The MCE hinted that so far the Assembly had engaged Land Valuers to value all the properties within the area and they have already come out with their data only to be surprised that the Assembly has so much properties and if the people would go by it and pay their monies duly, the Assembly would meet the needs of the Municipality.

She noted that if all the people abide by the rules and pay their debts, the Assembly would not suffer and as such, would not need to depend on the Common Fund.

I will like to see the IGF to be used for the interest of the community development such as schools, water, hospital, toilet facilities, and markets, among others. The DACF should be released on time,” she intimated.

By Innocent Samuel Appiah