Tamale, July 04, GNA - Government has voted 60 billion cedis out of the HIPC Fund for street naming and house numbering in the 10 regional capitals and some major towns throughout the country.

The exercise to be completed by March, next year, would be coupled with a robust database development for Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs).

Mr Stephen Asamoah-Boateng, Minister of Local Government, Rural Development and Environment, (MLGRDE) announced this at the opening session of a two-day technical workshop on the draft Local Government Finance Bill (LGFB) and establishment of Municipal Finance Authority for MMDAs in the three northern regions in Tamale on Wednesday. He said in a speech read on his behalf, that the exercise when completed would improve the capacity of assemblies to enhance their internally generated funds by about 50 per cent.

Mr Asamoah-Boateng said MLGRDE and Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning (MFEP) had embarked on a Municipal Finance and Management Initiative (MFMI) to develop a sustainable, vibrant and reliable local credit market for the assemblies to cope with the backlog of infrastructure development and service delivery.

He said the bill sought to provide a comprehensive law to guide the assemblies in raising private capital, other resources and empowering them to systematically move away from over-reliance on central government transfers.

Mr Asamoah-Boateng said under the bill, a Municipal Finance Authority (MFA) would be established to mobilise resources from both internal and external sources and channel them into productive infrastructure development and manage risk.

Mr Asamoah-Boateng explained that the bill would in addition facilitate the transfer of expertise to the assemblies to ensure rapid economic growth and poverty reduction.

Alhaji Mustapha Ali Idris, Northern Regional Minister, said there were several credit enhancement mechanisms that could increase the access of assemblies to capital market financing. He mentioned financing through pools of loans, reserved funds provided at the individual loan level, aid intercepts, collateral guarantees and seed fund provided by government and donor communities as some of the interventions.

Alhaji Idris said: "Structured together, these credit enhancement mechanisms could substantially increase the credit available for infrastructural projects taken by a single or coalition of assemblies." He pointed out that what the assemblies were required to access private capital market was the provision of information about their budgets and finances, adding that private lenders needed to make their own determination of the assemblies' credit.

Alhaji Idris said such information had to include administrative and legal structures, information about the economies of the assemblies, their budgets, fiscal operations and the anticipated borrowing that they would undertake.

"We therefore need to put our acts together, open our budgets and finances to public scrutiny and thereafter, could access private capital market," he added. 04 July 07