Financial Resources Mobilization Performance of Rural Local Government: Case Study of Three Union Parishad in Bangladesh

Union Parishads (councils) being the century old rural local government in Bangladesh are yet to fulfill the expectations of rural citizen which is mainly due to own resources constraints including miserable local resources mobilization. This paper focuses on Union Parishads recent revenue trend and performance from five years secondary data (2003-2007) and primary data collected from Parishad representatives, local people, government officials and national experts. Finding of the study shows that despite revenue potentials, weak revenue administration, inadequate adjustments and assignments of local revenue sources including lack of union functionaries training become impediments on local revenue enhancement. Other finding of the study suggests that in the absence of valuation based tax assessment system, households housing pattern and literacy rate can be significant determinants in ascertaining annual average holding tax revenue while per capita household holding tax, remittances, agricultural land ownership, households having electricity connections can be used as significant variables to determine the taxpayers ability to pay holding tax.