Common Fund debunks Send-Ghana report

The District Assemblies Common Fund has described as “misleading and unfortunate” a report that alleges disparities in the amount of money allocated to the Metropolitan Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs).

“We want to place on record that the Common Fund is disbursed to MMDAs with a formula duly approved by the Cabinet and Parliament, which gives a clear indication as to what amount the various MMDAs should receive in every quarter, and so it is misleading and unfortunate for anybody to state that there are disparities in the amounts allocated to the MMDAs,” a statement issued by the DACF said.

The statement was in reaction to a report, “Management of Public Finance for Effective Local Development: from the prospective of DACF”, released by SEND-Ghana on July 16, 2013, which found the DACF culpable over the disbursement of funds to the various assemblies, including alleged misappropriation.

Reacting to the report, the DACF explained that the projected amount due to any MMDA was based on the national budget allocation to the fund, which was also based on the estimated tax revenues of the country.

“Reading the main findings from the executive summary tells you that SEND-Ghana does not understand the workings of the Fund. For instance, it makes reference to statutory and non-statutory deductions categorisation which does not apply to the operations of the DACF,” the statement pointed out.  

It said if the DACF had been contacted before the compilation of the report, “such unfortunate misrepresentation of the facts could have been avoided, because most of the issues raised on deductions at source have already been dealt with.”

It said: “Those who compiled the report did not do their sponsors any good by their failure to contact the administrators of the fund to ascertain the veracity of some issues raised in their report, which the report claims were information supplied by some of the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) contacted.”

The statement expressed the hope that SEND-Ghana, as partners in development, “will take into consideration the facts provided and re-write their report to be acceptable to all parties involved, in the interest of mother Ghana.”

Daily Graphic/Ghana


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