The impact of local government reforms on financial management in Tanzania: a case Study of Ilala Municipal Council

This study is about the impact of Local Government Reforms on financial management in Tanzania. Ilala Municipal Council has been chosen as the case study. It is based on the assumptions that poor record keeping, non-compliance of the revenue rules and regulations and tax evasion still persist in Ilala Municipal Council despite the introduction of Local Government Reform Programme. From the analysis of the data collected the reforms have improved record keeping and compliance of the rules and regulations. The arguments raised from all the sources of the information indicate that there are still problems that face revenue collection in Ilala municipal Council despite the introduction of Local Government Reforms. Nevertheless, the nature of the problems observed before the reforms have somehow been eradicated. The analysis of the data collected has shown that noncompliance of the revenue regulations and tax evasion can be contributed to the mismanagement of Municipal finances. Poor record keeping is, however, not perceived to be a problem to Ilala Municipal Council. This study has also shown that the three hypotheses made in this study as causes of the mis-management of finance are not enough to explain the situation of financial management, there are other problems such as corruption, poor methods of outsourcing the revenue collection and management problems at large. The analysis also shows that if one talks of the problems such as poor revenue collections methods, poor financial record keeping and poor planning that the Ilala Municipal Council faced before the Local government reforms were introduced, the situation would have been worse.