Evaluation Of The Impact Of The Annual Assessment On Development Grants Funds In Lgas. A Case Of Dodoma Municipal Council

ABSTRACT

This study has intended to evaluate the impact of the annual assessment for the local governments‘ council development grants on the financial management performance in LGAs. A cross sectional research design was adopted; the sample size of 91 respondents was obtained through a purposive and non-purposive sampling techniques. This study observed that, the annual assessment has great contributions on improvement on the financial management performance, which enabled the Municipal Council to manage discretionary and the sector specific development funds and enhanced the value for money to the projects undertaken by Council as a result the - service delivery to the community. The annual assessment also, improved own source of revenue collection and better utilization of funds to projects undertaken by Council, improve reliability and the relevance of the financial statement as well as the decreasing number of internal audit quarries. The researcher has also found out that, there are irrelevant performance indicators used in the annual assessment, Low adoption in the usage of Integrated Financial Management System (IFIMS), Communication gap between LGAs and the Central government, failure to implement recommendation from the previous assessment comments, these were found as challenges encountered the implementation of the annual assessment in LGAs. This study, recommends the following; LGAs to set sufficient funds in the budget for capacity building to enhance efficiency usage of the financial system; Central government should strengthen the communication system with LGAs; The annual assessment team to review the relevancy of the indicators which were used to evaluate the performance of LGAs and indicators also should focus more on transparency and the value for money measurement.