Date Of Article: 4/16/2003
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Spending outside priorities—Mejn
By: Joseph Langa
The Malawi Economic Justice Network (Mejn) a civil society organisation that monitors expenditure in the budget has said government is not spending according to priority areas outlined in the budget although expenditure is within the available resources. Mejn National Coordinator Collins Magalasi said in an interview, most of the funds in the budget are diverted to other areas instead of spending on priorities agreed by parliament. Magalasi said both the Treasury and the line ministries divert funds to other areas, saying his organisation will soon come up with clear examples once they are through monitoring the 2002-2003 budget. He said reallocation or diversion of funds affects the quality of service delivery within the line ministries and government departments especiallyin key sectors of the economy like health, education and agriculture, among others. But Ministry of Finance spokesperson Patrick Zimpita in a separate interview denied that the treasury diverts funds when funding line ministries, saying if there is re-allocation of funds, which he is not aware of then it happens after the funds have been released to respective ministries and not Treasury. Zimpita said although Treasury is not funding the ministries in full as stipulated in the budget because of donor fatigue, all ministries are funded in small percentages of what was originally allocated to them in the budget. “Ministries are supposed to prioritise from the little that we can afford to give them according to the available resources and what was allocated to them. I don’t know of any case where we as Treasury funded without considering prescribed allocations,” he said. According to Magalasi, the country’s internal debts alone are now pegged at over K40 billion and over USD$2billion (about K184 billion) of external debts which he said lead to high interests rates and crowding out of the private sector.
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