Mejn for fiscal decentralisation
Malawi Economic Justice Network (Mejn) has called for fiscal decentralisation for local councils to enable the councils spearhead infrastructure and social development.
Mejn executive director Dalitso Kubalaso made the call in his contribution as part of civil society submission on budget presentation.
“On revenue collection, local councils have the burden of collecting small, but hard to collect revenues such as market fees while central government collects easily collectable and lucrative revenues.
“There is need to devolve revenue collection to local councils so that they too can benefit from increased financial resources at that level. To further enhance local finances, central government could declare some district centres as “rateable” areas so local councils can collect ground rents and other forms of taxes from them,” said Kubalaso.
Mejn further bemoaned that central government continue to exercise undue control over operations of local governments including on finances and planning while development partners have concentrated on NGOs and central government.
Kubalasa said the development has resulted in dillydallying on mundane decisions which had economic costs on local councils.
“Mejn says fiscal decentralisation has only focused on Other Recurrent Transactions (ORT), and not the development budget. With the coming in of the ward councillors, there is an urgent need for district councils to control the development budget as well, so that projects from the Sector Investment Plan (SIP) can be planned, rolled out and even successfully executed at the local level,” said Kubalaso.
He added: “ORT needs to be increased for the councils, because the current allocations have barely been enough to cover the district councils’ operating costs. At present the bigger chunk of the ORT has ended up being mostly used for the chiefs’ operating expenses.”
The country embarked on decentralisation process as it underwent several governance reforms decades ago but the process continues to face several challenges.
The call by Mejn comes as Treasury continues budget consultations ahead of budget presentation next month.
