INTERNALLY GENERATED REVENUES AND THEIR CONTRIBUTIONS TO PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT : A CASE STUDY OF AHANTA WEST DISTRICT ASSEMBLY

ABSTRACT 

The  concept  of  decentralisation  as  a  developmental  phenomenon comes with it, financial decentralisation and autonomy in which case the subnational  institutions  are  enjoined  to  generate  their  own  revenues  for  their developmental activities within their geographical areas. The study was to find out to what extent the Ahanta West District Assembly prosecutes its service delivery functions with its own internally generated revenues, and to examine the potentials and the challenges in the area of increased revenue mobilisation. The  study  used  focus  group  discussions  and  interview  schedules, applying  both  the  probability  and  non-probability  sampling  techniques  for  a total of 250 respondents drawn from the six Area Councils of the District. In addition, 14 revenue collectors and 12 key informants were also administered with questionaires. The  main  findings  are  that  the  Assembly’s  recurrent  expenditure  far exceeds  its  internally  generated  revenues  and  therefore  leaves  no  surplus  to support  service  delivery  functions.   The  main  conclusions  are  that  the Assembly  is  not  making  enough  savings  from  its  revenues  internally  to complement  central  government  grants  thus  making  it  overly  dependent  on central  government  for  funds.  This  is  due  in  part  to  increasing  recurrent expenditure  which  whittles  away  any  gains  in  the  growth  of  internally generated  revenues.  It  is  recommended,  inter  alia,  that  conscious  efforts  are made by the Assembly to extend its revenue collections into areas that have been  ignored  in  the  past  such  as  micro  economic  activities  in  very  difficult communities