The Birim South District Assembly last year collected 907.1 million cedis out of its target of 1.6 billion cedis.

The District Chief Executive, Mr Yaw Amprofi, who said this at the first Ordinary Meeting of the Assembly at Akim Oda on Wednesday said the amount represented about 90 percent of the targeted revenue.

He said the budget estimates for this year had been increased by 112 percent over the 2002 level and called for efforts from the assembly members to enable them to achieve the target.

Mr Amprofi said the District Assembly received 1.9 billion cedis as its share of the District Assembly Common Fund out of which 40 percent went into educational sector infrastructure.

He said over 16 schools in the district were re-rehabilitated, construction works on a few others had started and over 500,000 dual desks were provided for distribution to schools while about 40 million cedis was given out as bursaries to needy but brilliant students.

Mr Amprofi said the Assembly had been allocated 2.6 billion cedis as its share of Common Fund for this year, adding that 40 percent and 25 percent would be spent on education and health respectively.

Scholarship and bursaries for SSS and Teacher Training students for the year would amount to 79 million cedis, provision of 600 mono-desks to schools would also cost 90 million cedis.

The DCE said 131.7 million cedis had been set aside to build urban/area/town council offices with 52.7 million cedis going into HIV/AIDS and malaria eradication programmes.

An amount of 526.8 million cedis had also been earmarked for poverty alleviation, he said.