Lusaka City Council – LCC has during the Special Council meeting held in the Council Chamber on December 5, 2019. adoted the K395 million budget for 2020 financial year.
The Special Council meeting was convened to receive and adopt minutes of the Special Finance, Valuation and Commercial Undertakings Committee held on 21st November, 2019.
The budget which was presented by the chairperson of the Committee, Councillor Kelvin Kaunda of Mwembeshi Ward estimates for the financial year 2020 and was prepared on the basis of the Medium Term Expenditure Framework – MTEF and Activity Based Budgeting – ABB in line with the 2009 Budget Manual for Local Authorities and guidance received from government.
The budget was also prepared in line with Council’s 2017 to 2019 Strategic Plan and the Seventh National Development Plan.
In a statement made available to the Zambian Business Times – ZBT by LCC Public Relations Manager Goerge Sichimba, the Council has planned to finance 85 percent of the 2020 budget from locally generated revenues while the remaining 15 percent is expected to come from Central Government through the Constituency Development Fund – CDF and Local Government Equalisation Fund – LGEF.
The Council has set aside in the 2020 budget 40 percent (K134 M) of the locally generated revenue to be channeled towards service provision aimed at improving the level of service provision to the people in the City of Lusaka.
“My committee has set aside 40 percent of the locally generated revenue to channeled towards service provision. This is aimed at improving the level of service provision to our people here in the Greater City of Lusaka,” he said.
The Council has maintained the current level of Ward Development Fund – WDF at the current K13, 893, 000.00 translating into K421, 000.00 per ward.
In order to to achieve the budget target the council has drawn attention to ensuring that it implements fully the collection of parking fees through the use of e-levy system and implement the collection of the council revenues through mobile money by end of first quarter of 2020.
The council further intends to collect arround 10 percent of the accumulated historical debt of K30 million throug the use of the council’s own debt collectors and sheriff’s. Meanwhile, the K395 million budget for 2020 is a reduction from the 2019 budget which stood at K444 million.
