Finance Department is among the 13 departments in Arusha District Council. Finance Department comprise four main units, namely; Revenue unit that deals with revenue collections from different sources; Expenditure unit that deals with all expenditure incurred by the Council; Salaries unit that deals with the preparation of payroll of the workers; and Final accounts unit that deals with the preparation of financial statements of the council and Trade section that deals with business matters.
The Department has 18 Accountants, 3 Accounts Assistants and 7 Trade officers. The department needs to recruit 20 Accountants and 10 Trade officers in order to fulfill its duties efficiently. In terms of working facilities the department needs the following resources to perform its duties efficiently and effectively: 2 cars for running office and revenue collection, 50 Point of sale (POS) machine, 18 computers, 4 printers, 1 photocopy machine and staff incentives.
Finance and Trade department has the following functions: -
•Revenue collection from various sources internally and externally
•Expenditure management
•Record keeping on financial matters
•Preparation of income and expenditure reports
•Preparation of monthly, quarterly and annual reports
•Bank reconciliation and imprest register maintenance
•Preparation of payment vouchers and recording of receipts
•Authorization of payments
•Payroll preparation and adjustments.
•Custodian of all financial documents.
•Audit responses on Queried transactions
•Preparation of financial statementsa
The current situation of the department’s operations
Arusha District Council is among the Council that uses systems in performing activities such as revenue collection system which is Local Government Revenue Collection Information System (LGRCIS). This system is connected directly to TAMISEMI where sever is located, each transaction entered into this system is accessed by TAMISEMI. This system of revenue collection simplifies collection by using Point of Sale machine (POS) whereby payments at the point where operation is being carried. There are 80 POS machine in operation.
LGRCIS is integrated with NMB Bank, where a customer is given an identification number for the purpose of making various Payments (like Service levy, Billboards fee, License fee, parking fee, and rental fee) at any NMB branch.
Total of Tshs 2,486,457,820.37 have been collected by the Council from its own source which is 82.87%out of the targeted Tshs 3,000,470,000/=. In order to increase revenue collection and to reduce obstacles to customers to travel far away from the council seeking for a bank, two banks i.e NMB Bank and CRDB bank have located their branch inside Arusha Dc Buildings where they rent and offers all banking services. In dealing with expenditure, Arusha District Council is using Epicor Accounting system in making all payments, posting revenue receipts, bank reconciliation and issuing cheque through system. Also Epicor accounting is integrating with Bank of Tanzania (BOT) whereby all payments are done through TISS.
Apart from above achievements there are some obstacles affecting finance and trade department: -
•Inadequate of working facilities during revenue collection from various sources of income(Own source)
•Misinterpretation of some directives from Top management hinders revenue collections.
•Late remittance of 30% retention money from the Ministry of Land hinders council programs.
•Poor network infrastructure that causes delay in revenue collection also in payments
•Lack of direct communication from LGRCIS information to Epicor system whereby information from LGRCIS is transmitted to Excel then exported to Epicor, this may cause in accuracy of information and statistics.
•Directives from top management that removed the collection of secondary school fees
Trade unit: the trade unit is under the Ministry of Industry and Trade. But in the Local government it is under the Department of Finance performing the following functions: Issuing business licenses, economic empowerment, interpreting business laws and regulation to the business community, business license inspection, revenue collection and data management.
Arusha District Council has a total number of 3,578 businesses. According to the Business License Act No. 25 of 1972 all businesses are supposed to have license. Total number of 2,474 is licensed businesses while 1,104 are not licensed. Trading without business license is an offence hence frequent inspection is undertaken to ensure compliancy. Translation of business Act and its regulation have been done, posters concerning translation have been made and disseminated to traders through Ward Executive officers so as to let them be aware and adhere on it.
Business license is a major source of revenue of the council. In the year 2015/16 Arusha District Council targeted to collect Tanzania shillings 202,000,000/=. However only Tsh.206, 056,065/= was collected which is equal to 102%. The performance was beyond the targeted amount due to the frequent inspection and maintenance of data electronically.
Council promotes industrialization through sustainable improvement of trade infrastructure. In the second quarter of 2016/2017 statistics concerned trades and industries, basic consumable goods have been collected, analyzed and reported to Ministry of Industry and Trade for national evaluation.
