By Precious D. Freeman
Integrity Watch Liberia (IWL) concluded a day long dialogue on national dialogue around Revenue Sharing Law as part of efforts to ensure the full implementation of the Local Government Act (LGA).
The dialogue that was held in Monrovia yesterday brought together several media practitioners from different institutions, county councils, CSOs, IWL members, among others.
Giving the overview and the purpose of the engagement, an IWL representative, Marvin Ireland, said that the Liberian government had embarked on the decentralization policy about ten years ago, and there were several laws that had been passed to ensure that the decentralization, both in administrative and fiscal function of government, was effective at the local levels.
“It clearly explains now that the kind of power will be given to our local authorities, and some local authorities are already calling for revenue sharing,” he said.
He told participants that following the taxes of the Local Government Act, which was a 10-year plan that the government formulated to see what steps would be taken to implement the Local Government Act. As the step was ongoing, there were some sticky issues that were noticed within the ten years, and revenue sharing was one of them, noting that there are previous laws that prevented such from happening.
“This Act shall apply to the central government and all its institutional functionaries, particularly Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Liberia Revenue Authority, the local government fiscal board, as well as local government and sub-local government units,” he said.
Ireland furthered that one of the objectives of the Act is to build equity in revenue annually transferred by the central government to local government, in furtherance of decentralization.
He noted that the objectives also could be providing equitable sharing of natural resources revenues between the central governments and sub local government units.
“Another objective is to create incentives that encourage local governments to be effective and efficient in tapping their own revenue mobilization potentials,” he said.
Meanwhile, all of the participants applauded Integrity Watch Liberia for such initiative, and recommended that while hosting such next time, other stakeholders should be invited.
