The Upper East Regional Minister, Hon Stephen Yakubu, has called on Municipal and District Assemblies (MDAs) in the Region to adopt innovative ways to increase revenue mobilisation for economic growth and fiscal consolidation.
“You will bear with me that we are not in normal times and this year is very peculiar in view of the challenges the recent global and domestic developments have had on our economy and the negative effect on domestic revenue mobilization,” he said.
The Minister said this in a speech read on his behalf by Alhaji Inusah Abubakari, the Chief Director of the Regional Coordinating Council (RCC), at the Composite Budget Hearing for 2023 – 2026.
He said the financial situations as a results of the rising inflation, cost of living, credit rating downgrades, increasing debt serving, high cost of borrowing, high debt service cost, depreciation of the Cedi among others, posed a challenge to the implementation of the budget preparation guidelines.
Hon. Yakubu said the harsh reality was that the financial challenges might persist into they year 2023, and the need to adopt strategies that would improve on the internally generated revenue mobilization to augment the Intergovernmental Fiscal Transfer.
He urged the Assemblies to prioritize allocation of resources to strategic and critical programmes in the Medium- Term Development Plan and Annual Action Plan.
Hon Yakubu advised the Assemblies to ensure Aid on Budget to facilitate budget implementation as failure to do so, could result in the inability to utilize such funds during budget implementations.
The Composite Budget which was scheduled on zonal basis started on October 24, 2022 and expected to end on November 4, 2022.