What State will do to control spending next financial year

Dar es Salaam. The government is planning to start lending vehicles to the qualified officials as part of measures to control public spending.

Currently, the government said has 15,742 vehicles, 14,047 motor cycles and 373 machines and spends Sh558.45 billion every year in purchasing vehicles, fuel, spare parts and maintenance, the Minister for Finance Mwigulu Nchemba said yesterday.

By lending the vehicles to officials, Dr Nchemba said, maintenance costs will be upon the owners while fuel will be provided “in an appropriate manner.”

“….With this approach, the cost of maintenance, fuel and spare parts of the government for motor vehicles will amount to approximately Sh50.5 billion. A saving of more than Sh500 billion will be realized and allocated to procurement of essential medicines, providing loans to students for technical colleges and implementation of development projects,” said Dr Nchemba who presented the government budget for 2022/23 financial year.

According to him, such arrangement will exclude security and defence organs, judiciary, top leaders for ministries, corporations, agencies, regions, districts and project supervisors who are expected to be not more than five (5) for each institution.

Dr Nchemba also said the government will negotiate and enter into a framework agreement with car manufacturers that will enable the procurement of vehicles at affordable prices as it is for the international organizations such as UNDP

Other short-term measures proposed include minimising spending on domestic and foreign travels, reduce procurement costs and reduce delegation sizes for domestic and foreign meetings.

Payment of demoted officials

Dr Nchemba also confirmed the payment of demoted officials, that raised by the opposition in 2017.

The then the spokesperson for the opposition in the President’s Office (Regional Administration and Local Governments), Mr Japhary Michael (Moshi Urban-Chadema) said in Parliament that when the new government came into power, new district executive directors and regional and district administrative secretaries were appointed, leaving others hanging while they continued to enjoy government salary.

He then estimated the losses of about Sh5.76 billion every year due to double payment.

Dr Nchemba said yesterday that the government continues to pay salaries and other related benefits to demoted Permanent Secretaries, Regional and District Commissioners, Directors and the likes, describing such as unnecessarily costing government.

“As we are all aware, currently we have 25 ministries but there are 200 or more Permanent Secretaries on the payroll. Similarly, we have 185 Local Government Authorities but the list of DEDs (district executive directors) includes 500 persons who are paid the salary related to the position,” said Dr Nchemba.

He said the government plans to correct the anomaly by paying salaries of demoted officials commensurate with their current positions.

He said the government will also abandon the current transactional procurement practice which compares open tenders instead of the market prices of goods and services.

He said such a tendency has attracted bid prices higher than those in the wholesale and retail markets.

He said the government intends to improve the Tanzania National e-Procurement System (TANePS) including setting price ceilings for goods and services to be acquired.

Dr Nchemba said the government will strengthen the use of information and communication technology in its operations in order to curb expenditures.

He said all regional conference rooms should have ICT facilities for virtual meetings to contain travel costs.

“We want to replace the expression that government works on papers with government works on records,” he said.

Dr Nchemba also proposed the appointment of all CEOs of the state-owned entities to be done competitively for the relevant positions as a way of making them productive and reduce the government burden.