Workshop on Decentralization asks for increase in DACF

Ho, Nov. 5, GNA - The annual Parliamentary Workshop on Local Government Reforms has asked the Government to urgently “consider increasing the threshold of the District Assembly Common Fund (DACF) from 7.5 per cent to at least 10 per cent.

This was contained in a communiqué signed by Dominic Azimbe Azumah, Kwame Osei-Prempeh and Emmanuel Kwesi Bandua, chairpersons respectively of the Local Government and Rural Development, Subsidiary Legislation and Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs committees of Parliament.

The statement advised that “decentralization transfers of funds to the District Assemblies should include releases from the GETfund and the Road fund”.

The workshop, the third to be held, was the collaboration of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MLGRD), Parliament, the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), Institute of Local Government Studies (ILGS) with support from the German Development Cooperation (GIS).

The communiqué said the approval of the Composite Budgeting Process to begin in 2012 was refreshing and urged all “stakeholders to fully support this endeavour”.

It said it was particularly important for Parliament to be actively involved in the early processes and roadmaps to deepening decentralization.

The theme of the three-day workshop was: “The Roadmap to Administrative Decentralization (2011) and the Composite Budgeting (2012): The Role of Parliament”.

The statement lauded composite budgeting as good “and about the best to deepen fiscal decentralization and promote good public financial management systems”.

It called for the adoption of the “required legal framework for its effective delivery” of what looked like an “efficient, effective and transparent process that will facilitate efficient service delivery”.

The communiqué said Parliament would endeavour to vigorously exercise its oversight responsibilities over the process (composite budgeting) which would attain full implementation in 2013, leading to administrative as well as fiscal decentralization”.

It said Parliament should through similar workshops build its capacity to oversee the effective transfer of administrative power and resources to the local level.

The communiqué urged that the process of decentralization be quickened and recommended the adequate resourcing of the Local Government Service (LGS) to carry out its mandate under the requisite laws.

The communiqué commended the German Development Cooperation for its support of decentralization reforms over the past three years and asked for the renewal of the memorandum of understanding between it and the various agencies in Ghana to be “for the engagement to continue”.

It called for the “best practices arising out of the collaboration to be documented and disseminated or shared.”

In what was said to be frank, detailed and constructive discussions, the workshop tackled the status of administrative and fiscal decentralization, various organograms and reporting relationships of the local government areas, economic development in local governance among others.

GNA