Speaker urges vigilance in tracing public spending
Speaker of the National Assembly Richard Msowoya has asked legislators to bring sanity in the management of public funds through vigilance to combat illicit financial flows in their countries.
He said this during the opening of a week-long Fifth Meeting of the Executive Committee of the African Organisation of Public Accounts Committees (Afropac) at Parliament Building in Lilongwe yesterday.
The meeting has drawn participants from 10 African countries and is being held alongside the African Voice and Strategic Planning Workshop.
The Speaker said Africa has a long way to go to win the battle against fraud and abuse of public resources; hence, the need for the PACs to play oversight roles that will yield positive results.
Said Msowoya: “In most countries, we are far from winning this battle against fraud and all manner of misappropriation of public funds.
“We must move from the mere scrutiny of what was misappropriated in the approved budgets to seriously scrutinising the huge amounts of funds that are lost through illicit financial flows.”
The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (Uneca) says Africa loses between $30 billion and $60 billion to illicit financial flows every year, factors that negatively impact economic growth on the continent.
In his remarks, Afropac chairperson Edward Dagoseh said the meeting will help the countries come up with lasting solutions to issues of fraud and corruption in public finance management.
Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chairperson Alekeni Menyani said: “Public finance management is a serious problem in Africa. As the Speaker alluded to, we need to do more than just oversight. So, we hope that by the end of the meeting something plausible is going to come up.”
The 10 countries Malawi is hosting are Kenya, Liberia, Togo, Swaziland, Sudan, Tanzania, Namibia, Rwanda, Uganda and South Africa.
