Lack of funds hinder committee from tracking public expenditure

 Parliament’s Budget and Finance Committee has failed to adequately track public expenditure as part of its oversight role due to lack of funds for monitoring national budget implementation, Nation on Sunday has gathered.

The committee’s chairperson Gladys Ganda confirmed the matter while further revealing that they are pushing for the Public Finance Act amendment to insert provisions which would force the Treasury to allocate resources to the committee to track expenditure.

The Budget and Finance Committee is appointed by the National Assembly in pursuant to Section 56 (7) of the Constitution. Its terms of reference include being a “constructive party to the process of formulating the budget and monitoring the budget throughout its cycle, and to report on these matters to the National Assembly.”

Others are familiarising with the budget and reports on economic issues, statistical information, international agreements, financial reports, and reports on economic and policy statements.

But Ganda said the lack of funding has weakened their oversight role in the implementation of the national budget, describing it as retrogressive in a democratic nation.

She explained in an interview on Tuesday: “We are supposed to be involved in the full budget cycle. That’s from the formulation, approval process and even implementation. But what you see most of the time is that we are not able to do public expenditure tracking.

“We are aware that in the projects there’s funding which is allocated to monitoring which mostly is used by the Executive arm of government. When we ask for it, they [government departments] say we can’t use the money because Parliament is funded separately.”

Ganda said during the committee members’ meeting with Ministry of Finance representatives last weekend ahead of the 2022/23 budget meeting of Parliament which started on Thursday, they presented their lack of funding grievances.

She added that even though the ministry assured the committee over exclusive funding, there is no guarantee they would receive; hence, turning their attention to the law.

Ganda could not immediately quantify how much the committee would require to execute its full duties thoroughly.

She said: “The ministry’s response was encouraging because they said they were also thinking about the same; that they should involve the Budget and Finance Committee more in terms of oversight role in public expenditure tracking. So, we are only waiting for implementation.

“Besides that, there is the Public Finance Act which we are amending. We will ensure that all these soft agreements are put in the Act to make it legal. This will ensure that every Finance Minister follows what the law stipulates.”

The chairperson further queried the monopoly of the Executive institutions such as ministries, departments and agencies in public expenditure tracking.

“These institutions are the ones that implement the projects. Why should they be taking a prominent role in monitoring them? Parliament needs to be supported to take a leading role,” she said.

The Ministry of Finance spokesperson Williams Banda in a response to a questionnaire yesterday said they are reviewing the proposal.

“The Budget Committee is a key stakeholder in the budget consultations and currently as government we are doing final consultations and reviewing the proposals. The Minister of Finance will respond to all proposals in Parliament through Budget Statement soon,” he said.

Meanwhile, Centre for Social Accountability and Transparency executive director Willy Kambwandira backed the committee’s proposal for adequate funding.

He said: “In my view, the committee is deliberately suffocated by the Executive which uses it to merely rubber stamp its decisions. The committee has to be adequately funded so it should be critically analysing the budgetary allocation and performance.”

“Issues of ghost workers, massive plunder of local council staff, incomplete and abandoned projects and abuse of borrowed loans in the country clearly show the need for the Budget and Finance Committee to proactively provide its oversight role to help address public finance challenges