Ho Misses Revenue Target By 25%

Revenue generation performance of the Ho District Assembly in the Volta Region in the past year has nose-dived, and missing its annual estimate by a staggering ?400 million which is 25% of targeted revenue.

The Chief Executive, Mr. Mawutor Kwame Goh, made the revelation, which was surely a source of worry to the administration, last Thursday, when he addressed the assembly's first meeting of the year.

Mr. Goh said the assembly targeted ?1.64 billion as revenue for the 2002 financial year but had been able to collect only ?1.24 billion barely a month to end the year.

He decried the performance, saying it was not the best under the prevailing circumstance.

Even though he did not explain the cause of the woeful performance, the chief executive was relieved that the assembly had not overspent during the period under review.

He said the 88.2% recurrent expenditure made, representing ?1.25 billion, was within limits.

But also worrying was the assembly's failure to recover loans given to beneficiaries under the Poverty Alleviation Fund (PAF.) scheme, under which over ?385 million had been disbursed.

Mr. Goh lamented that repayment had not been encouraging, in spite of the display of defaulters' names on the notice board.

He hinted that plans were far advanced to start prosecuting such defaulters in batches.

The essence of his hard line stance, according to the mayor of Ho, is to help make the revolving nature of the fund a reality for the benefit of many people in the area.

Later in an interview with the Chronicle, the district budget analyst, Mr. Stephen Okrah,said the main contributing factor to their plight was the inability of area and town councils to collect revenue items seeded to them.

Mr. Okrah explained that for about two years now, basic rates, self-employment/artisans rate and residential property rates had been seeded to some sub-committees, but because the services did not go with salaries, the collection was very poorly done.

He intimated to the paper that for the whole of last year, all the 16 area councils at Ho, put together, collected only ?53 million for the assembly.

The revenue analyst said as part of strategies being put in place to prevent a recurrence, the assembly was studying the possibility of some new revenue items like household sanitation levy. A task force is also to be set up to comb the township to arrest and prosecute defaulters.

Meanwhile unconfirmed reports reaching the Chronicle regional desk indicate that all things going on as planned, the district will be elevated to a municipal status by the middle of this year.