Local govt makes K3m to sustain op

National
Source:
The National,Thursday June 30th, 2016

THE Kokopo-Vunamami Urban LLG (KVULLG) generates approximately K2 million to K3 million as internal revenue to sustain its operations.
Officer in charge for revenue, Pharen Suckey said the three main sources of this revenue were land tax rates, trading licences and garbage collection fees.
Suckey said under the Organic Law of Provincial Local Level Government, urban LLGs were allowed to collect land tax rates or revenue fees from business houses.
According to a valuation roll from 2013, there was a total 1394 commercial, industrial and residential blocks of land for which the urban council charged fees equivalent to 3 per cent of their value.
“From land tax alone we can generate K2 million as internal revenue for the LLG,” Suckey said.
He said there were currently 450 business houses issued with trading licences operating in Kokopo town and were charged K750 corporate tax annually.
If a business house operates several business activities they are charged K500 each for each of those respective activities.
Suckey said the total made from trading licences was K450,000 annually. Garbage collection generated K380,000.
“In total we can make K2 million to K3 million from these three areas to sustain our operations,” Suckey said.
Town manager Freddy Lemeki said despite the delay in LLG Service Improvement Grants, the KVULLG was able to stand tall as it was slowly becoming financially autonomous.
Lemeki admitted that having the capacity to utilise knowledge to come up with initiatives to generate internal revenue to sustain operations was the way forward for any LLG.
He said the KVULLG was privileged to have an Australian volunteer working with them in setting up a good database for the three different programmes used to generate income.
Lemeki pointed out that revenue collected from the taxes went towards improving services in town such as garbage collection, health inspections and maintaining street lights.