Accra, Sept. 10, GNA - Mr Stanley Nii Adjiri Blankson, Chief Executive Officer of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), on Monday said the Assembly would be 60 billion cedis (GH=A2 60 million) richer by the end of the year if they collected property rate from residents in the city.

He noted that, last year alone the AMA realized 11 billion cedis (11 million Ghana cedis) from the business operation permit fee paid by those operating businesses in the city and said the Assembly was starting an exercise to collect arrears from those owing up to December 2006.

Nii Adjiri Blanson was speaking at the beginning of a revenue mobilization exercise by the Assembly's task force to rope in all prospective ratepayers.

He explained that this year's revenue mobilization exercise was divided into two categories - property owners and the business owners. "For property owners, the task force will deal with arrears up to 2006.. For business operating permit fee, the task force will be dealing with all arrears including the outstanding for 2007 bills." Nii Adjiri Blankson said the second phase of the revenue collection programme would deal with rent on billboards and announced that a special task force was currently finalizing the outstanding debts for the various firms.

The billboard task force would start its fieldwork on October 1, 2007.

The AMA boss said another task force would deal with rents at the markets and all other facilities of the Assembly. "We believe that by the end of the year we would have finished with the first phase of our data updating and management project which would enable us to bill accurately and collect taxes from all rate payers." Nii Adjiri Blankson expressed the belief that the exercise would reduce significantly the revenue leakages that the Assembly had been experiencing for some years now and enable the AMA to improve their revenue projection abilities and overall planning and management of the city.

He advised residents and business owners to co-operate with the various task force teams to make the exercise a success while cautioning those who intentionally released their dogs on the task force to be careful.

He also urged the task force members to work diligently and ensure that they collected the right amounts. "I will monitor this exercise personally," he stressed. Apart from one shop, which sells electrical products, all other shops visited within the Central Business District around Opera Square produced receipts for payments.