Pressure mounts as MPs seek release of development funds

What you need to know:

  • Recently, it was revealed in parliament during the ongoing budget sessions that some ministries had received far below 50 per cent of the funds approved by the House for the projects.

Dar es Salaam. While implementation of the 2017/18 budget is on the home stretch, pressure is mounting for the government to release the funds for development projects in full before the end of this month.

Recently, it was revealed in parliament during the ongoing budget sessions that some ministries had received far below 50 per cent of the funds approved by the House for the projects.

In 2017/18, the parliament approved Sh31.7 trillion as the country’s budget, which was the record amount for Tanzania.

Some Sh19.7 trillion was set aside for recurrent expenditure while development expenditure figures stood at Sh11.9 trillion.

Nonetheless, according to ministers and Members of Parliament, only about half of the money allocated to the development projects has so far been released since April 2016.

Stakeholders say timely disbursement of the money would have made easy the implementation and completion of various projects within the set time frame.

Among others, they are concerned with the implementation of development projects under the ministry of Agriculture as it received Sh27.2 billion out of Sh150 billion allocated for its projects.

Others are ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment that received Sh47 billion out of Sh122 billion, Home Affairs (Sh21.8 billion out of Sh40 billion) and ministry of Energy (Sh424 billion out of Sh916 billion).

“We have very good plans on paper, but implementing them has been a big challenge because the government has not released enough funds as approved by the House last year,” said Mlimba MP Susan Kiwanga (Chadema) when debating the ministry of Water budget last month.

The ministry’s budget allocated for development projects was Sh623 billion, as of March, only Sh347 was released, which is slightly over half of the docket’s budget.

Various claimed that the government had no commitment to addressing water shortage in the country, especially in the rural areas where the problem is age-old.

Kibamba MP (Chadema) John Mnyika suggested that the parliament should not approve the budget until it was re-written to address the challenges that have persisted for long time.

“We have been discussing this year in, year out. Since the first day I entered this chamber, the MPs have speaking about water problems and nothing praiseworthy has changed. We are not treating our voters fairly,” he said.

Likewise, the ministry of Livestock and Fisheries Development, formerly ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development, had not received development funds by the time of tabling of the 2018/19 budget.

In the current year, the ministry was allocated with Sh35.6 billion whereas the budget for development projects was Sh4 billion.

Nzega Urban MP (CCM) Hussein Bashe and Mtama MP (CCM) Nape Nnauye expressed similar sentiments concerning the delay of the development funds release.

The MPs were of the view that the failure to release the money was a result of the government decision of shifting resources to projects that were not in the budget.

Communications sector under the ministry of Works Transport and Communication was among the department that suffered the most after they missed the disbursement for the year under review.

The sector was allocated Sh14 billion for development projects in the Sh4.5 trillion budget estimates approved for the 2017/18 financial year.

Delivering the oversight panel’s reaction of the Parliaments Infrastructure Committee chairman Moshi Kakoso said inadequate disbursement of funds was the key factor that hindered effective implementation of the planned projects.

“The committee has learnt that by March, this year, the communications sector had still not received funds from the Sh14 billion approved by parliament,” he said.

Earlier there was a concern over the delayed implementation of electricity supply in rural areas by the Rural Energy Agency (Rea) scheme with the minister of the docket saying they had not received sufficient money.

Thus, Speaker of Parliament Job Ndugai asked the minister for Finance and Planning, Dr Philip Mpango, to evaluate themselves and come with concrete answers over concerns raised by the legislators and lawmakers.

“Minister, there are so many concerns. The ministry of Energy can do nothing when its budget, which was in fact approved by this House has not been released,” he said.

In the current year, the energy sector under the then ministry of energy and minerals was allocated Sh945 billion whereas by March this year the ministry had received Sh424 billion only from treasury.

“Next time, we will start dealing with the Finance and Planning ministry when implementation of projects starts failing because money was not released,” said Mr Ndugai when the expenditure committee was approving the budget for the ministry of Agriculture.

Speaking to The Citizen, the University of Dar es Salaam senior lecturer of economics, Prof Haji Semboja, argued that the government needs to be careful with allocation of resources to ensure that the budget is realistic.

“This has happened almost every year. To avoid this, we need to review the expenditure plan so that it can reflect our available resources,” he said.

Repoa’s strategic research director Abel Kiyondo was recently quoted by The Citizen suggesting that the government should borrow a leaf from countries like Botswana, which has been recording a budget surplus every year because of underestimation of its budget.

“The budget should reflect the reality, the question we need to ask ourselves is, if expenditures keep on rising, where is additional revenue going to come from? Otherwise, we will be repeating the same mistakes,” he suggested.

Like other East African countries, the country’s 2017/18 budget theme revolved around industrialisation for jobs creation and shared prosperity.