Itezhi-tezhi deputy council secretary Cheembo Mang’wato says the abolition of the crop levy announced by President Banda during official opening of parliament on Friday will deprive the rural councils of much needed revenues.
Mr Mang’wato said an interview with ZANIS, today, that the abolition of crop levy will greatly impact negatively to the already financially limping rural councils.
Mr Mang’wato said that crop levy is one of the major sources of revenue for the district council.
He said that the council collects more than K100 million from crop levy annually.
“Crop levy is one of the major source of our revenues, in the year 2007 we collected a total of K104 million while in 2008 we collected 94 million from small scales farmers plus a 30 million from Itezhi-tezhi milling, ” he said.
He said that rural councils have very narrow revenue base and that the scraping of crop levy will worsen the financial position of rural councils who are already struggling to broaden revenue base.
“Rural councils are not like municipal and city councils that get lots of money from rates. In rural areas we have very limited number of buildings and businesses on which we can collect sufficient revenues to provide required services to the local people” he said.
He said the 2010 budget for the council which has already been approved by the finance committee has projected to collect much of the revenue from crop levy.
‘The finance committee last week approved a budget for 2010 whose major source of revenue is crop levy.” Mr. Cheembo said.
Itezhi-tezhi district council last week unveiled a K2.2 billion budget for the year 2010 and 40% of the budget has been earmarked for service provision to the local people in Itezhi-tezhi district.
Mr. Mangwato also said that the collection of dog levy in the district has not been affected due to non revision of the rates.
“The dog Act has not been revised, the rates that are there are extremely low such that we need to revise it if we are to collect meaningful revenue for the local authority’ he said.
ZANIS
i can bet my last zmk10,000.00 that budget was put together WITHOUT a profit-and-loss discipline. 40% earmarked for services is just robbery! that should be at the very least 90%. all of government (national plus local) should have less than 10% impact on the economy through both spending and regulation. a very good example is chile which we can emulate.
failing that (which has happened already), just sell zed to taiwan.
Bad policy, how do the so called Councils raise revenue. Maybe Govt should just do away with these Councils that promote poverty in many districts instead of enhancing development
personally i wellcome the presidents idea because councils have failed to utilize the revenues collected.money is being misaplied.stop crying,farmers are being taken for granted.well council try farming to raise more money than crying for revenue collection