Abstract:
As the life-wire of every state, revenue refers to the income of government at any
level. Revenue is critical as it determines to a large extent how much money will
be available for spending. Without income, there will be no budget, and thus no
spending. Revenue for government spending is generally raised from taxes, levies,
service fees, and licenses. Local governments differ in the extent to which they can
raise sufficient funding within the local government area for the services for which
they are responsible. Therefore, local government receive a smaller or larger part
of their funding from revenue raised at their territory level, Furthermore; the ways
in which revenue is raised have implications for equity and economic stimulation.
For a number of reasons, local governments have other responsibilities for the
development of certain sections of the economy by providing limited range of
social services and public amenities. In the recent years, administering revenue
generation has transcended all known considerations in importance because the
extent to which local government executed its development projects depends,
largely on the amount of revenue generated. Each local government body of any
state has a number of ways through which it denied revenue required to meet up its
public expenditure needs. It is in view of this that the challenge is taken to
examine the sources of revenue as well as problems encountered in revenue
generation in the Municipal Council of Sri Lanka. This study focuses on the
revenue collections and the related issues in Akkaraipattu Municipal Council in Sri
Lanka. The prime objective of this study is to evaluate the revenue collections of
the Municipal Council from last two years. The fundamental questions of this
research are the following: how does the local body generate the income, what are
the problems faced by the council during revenue collection and how they can
improve their revenue collection at the local level. This study is based on an
interpretive approach. The data were collected from both primary and secondary
sources. In addition to primary sources, qualitative interviews were conducted with
representatives of council and a particular number of voters. Secondary sources
such as published and unpublished records, both from different levels of
government and from NGOs, were also consulted. Finally this study provides
appropriate recommendations to improve revenue collections in the studied area.
