AMA Plans Property Re-evaluation

By William Yaw Owusu

Thursday February 22,2007
EFFORTS by Accra Metropolitan Assembly to increase its revenue received a major boost with the submission of the first batch of reports on the re-evaluation of all properties in the Metropolis.

The exercise which commenced last November was conducted by the Land Valuation Board (LVB) at the request of the assembly.

The AMA is expected to increase revenue from property rates therefore if the recommendations in the report are implemented effectively.

Alex Sarfo, Executive Director of Ratings Valuation Division of the LVB, said the first batch of the report covered 21,054 properties with a total rateable value of ¢7.99 trillion.

He said the valuation, progressing simultaneously in t6he rest of the five divisions mapped out6 under the exercise is expected to be completed by the end of April.

Mr Sarfo said the last time a valuation exercise was conducted was in 1996 adding that “we applied the 2006 values to ensure that the AMA generate more revenue.”

“A lot of properties that were not in the tax net have been captured and it is going to boost the AMA’s revenue generation.”

Stanley Nii Adjiri Blankson, the Metropoli8tan Chief Executive said the current situation where only 63,000 properties were in the AMA tax net was unacceptable.

By the end of March when the exercise is completed, the number of properties expected to pay taxes will triple from what I am seeing.”

He said “we will start to reap what has been denied us for a long time. The AMA will then start thinking of standing on its feet and not necessarily depend on the central government.

The Mayor said the AMA had come to the realization that Accra was developing rapidly and the appropriate strategies needed to be adopted to meet such challenges.

AMA Co-ordinating Director Isaac Ajovu said the report will serve as a means to update its data adding “we will take advantage of this to increase our revenue tremendously.”

He said the AMA, through the sub-metros, will display the new property rates to elicit feed back from the public implementation.