YOUR BUSINESS IS OUR BUSINESS: Unfulfilled budgeted disbursements tragic

Nearly a decade ago, the Infrastructure Development Parliamentary Committee warned the government on issues appertaining to the Tanzania International Container Terminal Services (Ticts), the largest container terminal in Tanzania.

In question were contractual issues, including royalty, exclusivity – and a peremptory 15-year extension of the Ticts contract when the initial contract was nowhere near expiring. Also dismaying was that Ticts had not tangibly invested in Tanzania as agreed in the contract, despite operating in the country for eight years. [See ‘Bunge team warns Govt. over Ticts’ by Mwanamkasi Jumbe; The Citizen, Jan. 15, 2009].

These contractual lapses may sound mundane to some. But, fulfilling contractual obligations can be pivotal to success for a country still struggling to become a semi-industrialised, middle-income Economy in the remaining seven short years under its ‘National Development Vision-2025.’

Let’s hit the Fast-Forward button to this year, when another parliamentary committee has warned the President John Magufuli government that poor disbursement of project funds is hampering, and otherwise undermining, the President’s industrialisation agenda. Presenting the ‘Oversight Report on the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment’ in the ongoing National Assembly in the nation’s capital city Dodoma on May 10, the chairman of the ministry’s Parliamentary Committee, Suleiman Saddiq, said the committee members “were deeply concerned that slow disbursement of budgeted funds threatens smooth implementation of the industrialisation drive.”

[See ‘Bunge team warns Govt.’ by Sharon Sauwa @TheCitizen ; May 11, 2018]. For example, only about 10 per cent (Sh8 billion) of the Sh80.11 billion allocated for development projects to the ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment for the 2017/18 financial year had been released by March 2018… And a measly Sh37.4 billion had been released to the ministry by March, out of the total Sh122.2 billion budgeted for its entire activities in the same financial year.

Arguably, the call by Chairman Saddiq for the Government/Treasury “to release the remaining funds for development projects by June 30 this year” when the current financial year ends cannot be much more than an exercise in futility. If the Treasury could fork out only ten per cent of the budgeted funds for development projects in nine months of the 12-month financial year, how can it ‘afford’ to release the remaining 90 per cent

(Sh72.11 billion) in the remaining three months, pray?

This is not the first time that failure to disburse funds for industrialisation on time and in full has happened. In FY-2016/17, the government had disbursed only 19 per cent of budgeted funds by April 2017.

It seems habitual – and is worsening with time.

Failure to disburse budgeted funds as planned in the books plays merry hell with the implementation of socio-economic development projects, including industrialisation in particular.

This is tantamount to Tanzanians shooting ourselves in the foot – and, in effect, it wreaks havoc with the country’s glorious ‘Development Vision-2025.’

It renders the national hopes for a semi-industrialised, middle-income Economy no more than ‘Alinacha’s daydream in the ‘One Thousand and One

(Arabian) Nights.’

More is the pity – if only because, at this rate of disbursing a pittance of budgeted funds, talk of achieving the Vision-2025 and the Sustainable Development Goals-2030 becomes a hollow bellow agony.