Assessing Revenue Generation Processes And Strategies In The District Assemblies: A Case Study Of The North Tongu District Assembly

ABSTRACT

Revenue generation by local governments towards the development of their respective areas in recent times has been identified as a major challenge. In view of this, the study aims at assessing the revenue generation processes and strategies adopted by the District Assemblies to generate revenue, in addition to the challenges encountered in these processes in order to recommend measures to improve the system. To achieve the above, the study adopted the qualitative case study approach to investigate the problem. A purposive sampling technique was used to select a total sample size of thirty-six (36) respondents and participants from the North Tongu District Assembly, including Assembly and Unit Committee Members as well as revenue collectors. The findings of the study revealed that stakeholder inclusion in the budgetary process and the availability of a reliable database for identifying and forecasting revenue generation was very poor. It was also revealed that revenue collection involved the use of a manual issuance of tickets coupled with poor enforcement of regulations involving revenue collection. The study also found that the unavailability of logistics, poor training of revenue collectors in addition to poor monitoring resulted in leakages of revenue for the Assembly. The study concluded that in order to improve the system of revenue generation, there is the need to involve various stakeholders in the budgetary process of identifying the revenue sources, whiles using efficient collection systems, providing enough logistics such as vehicles in addition to providing adequate training for the various revenue collectors in the Assembly.