MMDAs poised for 2022 - 2025 budget preparation after guidelines training

Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies (MMDAs) are set to maximize the impact of well-planned budgets for the growth and development of their local economies, for the next four years.

This was made possible at a three-day budget preparation guidelines workshop, organized by the Fiscal Decentralisation Unit (FDU) of the Ministry of Finance (MoF) in collaboration with GIZ. The workshop sensitized and refreshed Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assembly (MMDA) Budget Analysts and Officers on the requirements for the preparation of the 2022 – 2025 Composite Budget.

FDU, in consultations with stakeholders and monitoring at the MMDAs, has updated the Budget Programme Structure, and the Ghana Integrated Financial Management System (GIFMIS), which will be rolled out and implemented at the sub-national level for all 260 MMDAs. This is to strengthen the allocation of resources, budget execution, accounting, and reporting as well as enhance the preparation of the Composite Budget within the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework.

The 2021 - 2025 budget guidelines also included a revised Composite Budget Manual and a revised Fee-Fixing Guidelines. In June 2017, the Ministry of Local Government, Decentralisation and Rural Development issued Fee-Fixing guidelines to streamline fees, permits, and charges of MMDAs in their area of jurisdiction. However, this was reviewed in 2021. Hence, the need to update MMDAs on the new guidelines to facilitate their fee-fixing processes.

After the training, Budget Analyst and Officers are expected to transfer knowledge gained from the training to their Assemblies’ Budget Committees and Heads of Departments to deepen their knowledge and skills on budget formats, policies, and instructions in the budget preparation guideline for 2022 – 2025, as well as the updated Chart of Account (CoA) for 2022 budget preparation.

Western Regional Budget Analyst, Daniel Ofosu Adjei, noting concerns of MMDAs on the late release of the guidelines, entreated the Finance Ministry to adhere to the Public Financial Management (PFM) Act and make the guidelines available by June of each fiscal year to enable MMDAs to have enough time to work on their Composite Budget for submission.

John Donkor of the Eastern Regional Coordinating council on his part raised concerns with the late uploading of the MMDA budget onto the GIFMIS platform. This he hinted leads to MMDAs spending outside of the budget contrary to the PFM law and punishable by the same law. He implored the FDU to work hand in hand with the GIFMIS Secretariat to get the budgets uploaded to the GIFMIS by January of each fiscal year for implementation.

Regions were grouped into two zones with centres in Sunyani and Koforidua for three days per region.

MMDA Officers left the workshop with increased knowledge and awareness of the enhanced budget preparation software (Activate Software), and the GIFMIS for budget execution. This, the Ministry believes, would translate into an enhanced composite budget quality of MMDAs, improved revenue mobilization systems, and improved social accountability at the sub-national level.

GIZ, in the coming weeks, will support all 16 Regional Coordinating Councils (RCCs) across the nation to organize Budget Production Workshops for the MMDAs to be followed by Budget Hearings.

All MMDAs in Ghana are to submit their Composite Budget to the Ministry of Finance latest by 31 October 2021.