Accra, Dec. 1, GNA - A total of 19.5 million dollars has been distributed to selected Metropolitan, Municipal and District assemblies (MMDA) to be used as development grants and for capacity building respectively.

Mr Joseph Yileh Chireh, the Minister of Local Government and Rural Development who announced this at a press conference, said the money was part of a programme dubbed: "Performance Based Grant System (PBGS) that sought to reward district assemblies performing well while building the capacity of assemblies which were weak.

The programme is aimed at improving the performance of MMDAs, encouraging transparency and to complement efforts of development partners' assistance to the districts.

An amount of 31.9 million dollars is expected to be disbursed under the programme, out of which the 19.5 million dollars is the first disbursement. The distribution was based on an assessment done in 2006 based on a programme called Functional and Organizational Assessment Tool. Mr Yileh Chireh said the 2006 assessment showed that only 50 out of 138 MMDAs passed the performance assessment test, the rest did not pass. "Therefore only 50 MMDA received the development grant in addition to the capacity building grant; the remaining 88 received only capacity building grants."

The Minister further announced that details of the disbursement would be published in the media to promote transparency and accountability in the entire process to generate public confidence as well as allow the public to keep track on what the resources were being used for. Mr Elvis Afriyie Ankrah, Deputy Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, said the programme was to help boost development in the district assemblies. The Ashanti Region got the highest amount of 5, 270,273.03 Ghana Cedis while Greater Accra Region got the lowest disbursement of 196, 835.35 Ghana Cedis. 1 Dec. 09