|
|
|
|
| World |
| Backbencher |
|
by
Anonymous, 24 June 2006
-
06:03:27
|
Adhering to budget just the starting point
Honourable Folks, presenting a sound budget as the Honourable Goodall Gondwe, Minister of Finance, did on Friday last week can only be the initial challenge. The second is to spend within budget—as was the case last year (no mean achievement considering the gross failures of the previous UDF government in this area).
But the third and probably biggest hurdle is to ensure that there is something to show (for the prudent expenditure) by the end of the day. I mean something much bigger than what was summed up by UDF spokesperson Sam Mpasu as the Mutharika administration’s achievement so far, namely the construction of Kamuzu’s mausoleum.
The 2006/07 budget—like the 10 or so other budgets before it—hasn’t just been a mere blueprint of government’s revenue collection and expenditure for the year. It has also drawn the best from the multiparty system of government. It’s formation is a result of consultations with various stakeholders, including the civil society, business captains and donors.
As I’m talking right now, the budget is in the august House here and honourable members do have a constitutional duty to constructively tear it apart before passing it. Not only that, where there are questions, the Honourable members can seek answers from Cabinet ministers. In addition, Section 89(4) of the Constitution makes it the duty of His Excellency, the President “to be called to Parliament to answer questions.”
I would like to believe that all these consultative processes help in the production of great budgets. Indeed, let me state at the outset that good budgets are not an invention of the Mutharika administration. The Muluzi administration, too, churned out good plans on revenue collection and expenditure.
In addition, the UDF government also put in place systems and mechanisms to ensure revenue collection is maximised and that there is prudence in revenue expenditure. They introduced the cash budget, transformed Customs Department into Malawi Revenue Authority and set up the Anti Corruption Bureau.
They also set up the Directorate of Public Procurement and enacted laws meant to punish recklessness in budget management by Controlling Officers. All these and other measures were meant to ensure fiscal discipline.
The problem was on implementation, especially on the revenue expenditure side of the budget. Despite coming up with good budgets and impressive systems and mechanisms for fiscal management, the Muluzi regime perennially squandered more than what was budgeted for and largely on the trivia.
Here was a president who cherished a warped belief that splurges could alleviate poverty. He personally dished out a lot of money to praise-singers and other party loyalists. His presidential motorcade included trucks carrying maize for distribution at political rallies.
He also had the tendency to reward political loyalty with top jobs in the public sector, resulting in the nurturing of probably the most incompetent public sector management in the history of independent Malawi and the creation of a state that was much larger than the economy.
Director of Public Prosecutions Fahad Assani cut a job for himself when he publicly declared that fraud, corruption and inefficiency were costing government 30 percent of its revenue annually, a rate 50 percent above Sadc average of 20 percent.
Yet, throughout the decade, corruption was mostly denied and not fought. The unscrupulous got a cue from the mediocre leadership and plundered the economy with absolute abandon. You just have to follow the K187 million kwacha construction scam in the Ministry of Education to realise how bad the situation was. Contractors, including Cabinet Ministers, got paid in full for jobs half done or not done at all. I remember how a former Cabinet Minister constructed a fence around a certain primary school in the night after the media exposed the scam!
By the end of Muluzi’s decade of government of mediocrities, Malawians were poorer than they had been before he assumed office. Not only that, he left us with a domestic debt of K60 billion—which in 2004 was almost equal to the national budget—to settle.
Unlike Muluzi, Mutharika has at least demonstrated the political will to spend within budget, if what happened last year is anything to go by. What is not clear so far is whether this sticking to the budget is an end in itself or is meant to ensure that every taxpayer’s penny is spent on something that adds a brick to the kind of Malawi that the President promised in his inauguration speech.
Former Finance minister Friday Jumbe said last year’s budget was adhered to at the expense of service delivery. This is true. There were media reports that government hospitals, including Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital—the biggest referral hospital in Malawi—could not undertake certain life-saving operations due to lack of basic material such as spirit and gloves. The minister responsible simply attributed this to poverty.
Spending within the budget is a prudent fiscal measure but it comes with a price and it is ordinary people who pay. The sacrifice is made on the assumption that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Shall people see much difference by the next general elections in 2009—time when people will assess government’s achievements and decide whether to stick by it or usher in a new government?
Sometime back, when the Muluzi administration gave education the lion’s share of the budget, an official from the Ministry of Education—who happened to be my secondary school teacher in the 70s— remarked that even had the entire budget been allocated to education alone, it would not have solved half the problems rocking the sector.
That was some eight or so years ago and I know that all along education has been enjoying the so-called lion’s share. Yet, when the Mutharika administration decided to allocate the lion’s share to agriculture this year, education watchdogs cried foul, listing many problems that still remain to be tackled if Malawi is to achieve the Millennium Goals on education by 2015.
The question is: did the elite allocations of the past eight or so years make any difference to the education sector at all? Perhaps, we should also ask the Minister of Agriculture whose sector has been given the highest allocation of nearly K17 billion this year how they intend to capitalise on their privileged status. Will the agriculture sector too cry wolf should, eight years from now, government decide to give the highest allocation of the budget to health or tourism sectors?
The truth is that we tend to wrongly assume that money alone can bring desired changes in the various sectors of our economy. Yet experience of the past decade has clearly shown that generous allocations, if squandered on seminars, familiarisation tours, foreign trips and per diems, do not translate into great achievements. Change comes when funding is meant to finance the implementation of great ideas or plans.
This is where there is a big question-mark in the Mutharika administration. It is just not clear how, in the remaining two years, agriculture will be revitalised and the economy transformed from consuming to producing and from importing to exporting.
This was the President’s promise in 2004. Let government spin doctors explain what has been achieved so far and how the government will achieve the remainder. I believe this will keep them too busy to waste time fighting free press.
–– Feedback: backbencher2005@yahoo.com |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
