The Republic of Ghana is a unitary state divided into ten administrative units or regions each headed by a regional minister appointed by the president. The principal unit of local government are the District Assemblies (DAs) of which there act 138. Between the District Assemblies and the central government are the Regional Coordinating Council (RCCS).
The RCCS are made up of the representatives from each of the district assemblies in the region, and from the regional house of chiefs.
The role of these bodies is to coordinate policy implementation amongst the district assemblies. In addition to DAs, there are also metropolitan and municipal
Assemblies. Local Government Finances and Revenue Utilization in Ghana District authorities have three sources revenue: the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) ceded revenue and own revenue raised through local taxation (Crawford, 2004).
The DACF is the main source, providing a constitutionally guaranteed minimum share of government revenue (no less than 5%) and thus some, but nonetheless limited financial independence. Payment of all staff working in the district currently under line ministries budgets. Ceded revenue refers to revenue received from a number of lesser tax fields that the Central Government has ceded to the DAs.
It is collected by the Ghanaian Internal Revenues Services, and then transferred to DAS via the ministry Local government and Rural Development. Finally, there is the collection of own revenue through some local taxes. This does not, however, amount to much as to called “lucrative tax fields” (for example the income tax, sales tax, import and export duties) all belong to the central government (Nkrumah, 2000).
The district assemblies are reasonable for the setting and collecting of local rates. In other words, the local governments in Ghana have reasonable constitutional and powers to generate revenue unlike in Nigeria.
CONCLUSION
In conclusions, we can say that the local government in Ghana is better than in Nigeria. Government places a lot of emphasis on rural development and transparency in government. This has led to some what stable macro-economic stability in the country. Local governments are not used as political tools by the government in power.
The Ghanaian constitution respects the autonomy of the local development programmers for their people. This relatively stable macro-economic environment, coupled with improved governance environment has increase the confidence of investor (both domestic and foreign) investment by domestic firm as well as attracting more foreign direct investment into the economy.
This has led to the increase in jobs and incomes experienced in localities where significant reduction of poverty has been observed. Also the increase in budgetary allocations from the central government to the local government to financial the provision of selected rural infrastructure particularly in roads and agriculture (irrigation), as well as the utilization of the HIPCS fund to support expenditures in employment-generating projects at the district levels has positively impact on poverty reduction.
In Ghana, there is participatory budgeting between the various levels of government. This is a process whereby communities work together with elected representatives (councilors) and official to develop policies and budgets in order to meet the needs of the community. We do not have in Nigeria.