Skip links

Article 7 - Volume 33/2 - 2023

Paper title:

Municipal budgets in the context of development actions: the case of the city of Gagnoa (Centerwestern Côte d'Ivoire)

Author(s):

Tangologo SILUE1, Bêh YEO2 and Jean Louis KOUAKOU KOUAME3

1 Université Peleforo Gon COULIBALY, Côte d’Ivoire
2 Assistant, Géographie, Université Peleforo Gon COULIBALY, Côte d’Ivoire
3 Université Alassane Ouattara/ Labo VST, Côte d’Ivoire

Pages:

84 - 103

Publishing date:

15 December 2023

Abstract:

The economic wealth derived from the enhancement of the colonial legacy has enabled the government of Côte d'Ivoire to be an entrepreneur country and therefore to directly finance the equipment and development of cities through programs and strategies. From the 1980s, the economic crisis that shook the country led to a change in development strategy. This led to the creation of communes. In the context of this decentralisation policy, communes have the task of participating effectively in local development through the establishment of quality equipment and infrastructure with a view to reducing social and economic inequalities. In this context, the question of how to finance this policy in our cities is acute. It is therefore necessary to think about diversifying the sources of funding and better distributing them (investment budget and operating budget) to boost local development. This contribution highlights this issue by analysing the distribution of the budgets of the municipal council of Gagnoa in centerwestern Côte d'Ivoire. The method is organized around a literature review, a field survey and an internship at the town hall of Gagnoa. The results show an evolution of the Gagnoa's own revenues, an evolution of municipal taxes from 2019 to 2021 and a budgetary allocation from the Ivorian government. In total, the overall budget of the Gagnoa City Hall has increased from 541,245,000 FCFA in 2007 to more than 1,275,800,933 FCFA in 2021, an increase of 734,555,933 FCFA in 15 years. However, the operating budget (9,012,026,465 FCFA) is much higher than the investment budget (1,834,890,163 FCFA) which slows down the momentum of investments in the city.

Keywords:

City of Gagnoa, economic crisis, financing, local development, budgets.