East Africa: Experts Call for Budget Transparency in East Africa

Tanzania Daily News (Dar es Salaam)

Pius Rugonzibwa

15 June 2011

BUDGET transparency in East Africa countries has been termed as relatively poor, although some little openness can be observed while information provided in the budget documents remains minimal.

The EA conference on budget transparency which met in Dar es Salaam recently, came out with resolutions aimed at achieving maximum transparency in the budgets. It was agreed that governments must implement at least minimum standards regarding release on budget information.

It also urged the Parliamentary Committees, Executives, Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) and citizens to develop a common outstanding and approach to the provision of third party monitoring and feedback on the entire budget process.

The conference which brought delegates from all EA Member states and other invited countries as well as the Media, Civil Society Organizations, development partners insisted on the application of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in strengthening transparency and accountability.

“This includes capitalizing on potential features of technologies such as geo-coding, mobile phones, social media and others,” it recommended. An NGO called Uwazi which came with a question ‘Can people follow their money?’ says comprehensiveness of information provided in budget documents remained minimal with Tanzania and Sudan scoring poorly on that category.

However, Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda scored fairly with Uganda doing relatively well in pre-budget statements, executive budget documents, enacted budget, provision of citizen budget and in-year reports consecutively. Other documents include mid-year review, year-end report and audit report in which Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Sudan have those not produced at all or produced but not released.

Uwazi underscores further that weak engagement of parliaments in producing transparent budgets in the region were mainly caused by little time to adequately scrutinize budge proposals before their approval, lack of powers needed to amend the executive’s budget proposals and little scrutiny of audit report.

To rectify the situation, the NGO recommends for the enhanced comprehensiveness of information provided in the budget documents as well as strengthening the oversight committees and institutions through stepping up their resource base, authority and independence.

“Create space for public hearings so the public can engage directly with the legislatures in the budge process,” it noted. Tanzania through the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, however, had reported to have made some progress in ensuring production of transparent budget as per requirements of the Open Budget Index-Tanzania office.

The Ministry says it was committed to start producing comprehensive information on the budget proposal and that so far, an attempt had been made to produce the Budget background and Medium Term Framework which provides sufficient information on the government budget. On the Citizen’s Budget, the Ministry says it had already recorded progresses by discussing with an NGO called Policy Forum to explore on possible joint production and publications of the Citizen’s budget.

“An appeal is made to CSOs to be proactive in seeking for budget information and help the government in conveying its message in simpler ways,” it says. It also pledges to produce In-year reports which includes Quarterly Budget Reports (BER) although it also reported some complications in producing mid-year report in which approval must be sought from higher authorities first.

According to the Tanzanian Controller and Auditor General (CAG), Mr Ludovick Utouh, the conference had deliberated on budget transparency as the EA states looked forward to jointly present their budgets early this month. He was of the opinion that the knowledge and experiences acquired by members of the conference will be applied to improve countries’ budget process .

He gives the challenges that countries should be able to come up with appropriate roadmap towards achieving number one ranking on the OBI emulating South Africa recently emerged number one in the world on budget transparency. “Why can’t our East African countries achieve the same status? It can be done, let us all play our roles,” he challenged. And during the opening of the Conference, the Minister of East African Co-operation, Mr Samwel Sitta underscored the need for East African countries to improve their poor budget management systems.

Mr Sitta was of the view that timely release of comprehensive, transparent and accurate financial information for the public to easily trace them. He said that in practice, budgets in many countries in the region have been not always implemented in the exact form which they were approved. Once the fiscal year is over, it should be made practical for the public should be able to measure whether their resources have been spent effectively or not. “Obviously, if the budgets were open to the public and with existing legislative scrutiny, there would be less scope for deviation from policy decisions and reversal of budget allocations.

A budget that is not transparent, accessible and accurate cannot be properly analyzed,” he insisted. The Minister challenged for oversight institutions such as Audit Offices, Media and Parliamentary budget Committees to be independent and have resources for the sake of having in place quality audit reports and make it simple for the public to evaluate their budgets.

And in the case of budget presentation, the Minister says full picture of the government’s financial status has to be given and donor communities have to be made aware that off-budget programmes should be avoided. He called for the crucial donor co-ordination with countries especially in budget formulation citing an example of Tanzania where all releases of resources have to be published and implementation is discussed at quarterly meetings of donors and line ministries.

“The overall idea is that government and donors should work together to implement a single expenditure programme which prioritize the use of all sources of funding for public expenditure across all sectors,” he emphasized. The conference, whose primary objective was to provide an opportunity to share and discuss on the concept of budget transparency and accountability in the region, was optimistic that the endeavour might be more practical as the region looks forward for political federation.

It was jointly organized by the National Audit Office (NAO) as well as the Tanzania Parliament, Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, Ministry of East African Co-operation and World Bank Country Office will gather the knowledge to be applied in improving EAC budget process.

Delegates, according to Mr Utouh, were, apart from sharing experiences from different countries, supposed to come up with the appropriate roadmap towards achieving number one ranking on the Open Budget Index (OBI).

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