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- Feb 11, 2007
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Monday, 11 June 2012 09:38 |
By Ludger Kasumuni, The Citizen Reporter Dar es Salaam. A tusle pitting the Parliamentary Committee on Finance against the minister for Finance William Mgimwa has emerged over the funds allocated to the development budget for the financial year 2012/13.The legislators are pressuring the minister to increase the development budget allocation or risk a "No Vote" in Parliament when he tables his Budget speech this week.The minister, however, has refused to bow to the pressure and instead, he went on to "lecture" the Committee on how he arrived at the figure they are disputing and why development allocations have to remain the way he has set them. The issue started last Thursday when members of the Finance Committee rejected the Sh4.5 trillion preliminary estimates for the development budget presented before them by Dr Mgimwa, telling him to go and revise them upward and then bring them back for another appraisal. The committee rejected development allocations for the 2012/13 Budget because their proportion to the total budget was lower, at 30 per cent, than that of 2011/12 which stood at 38 per cent. The House team wanted the development allocations to constitute at least 35 per cent of the total budget. More significantly, the Committee wanted the minister to reduce about Sh301 billion from the "Other Charges (OC) Vote" in the recurrent budget and add it in the development budget. It also wanted an explanation on what they viewed as huge allocations on hospitality, domestic and foreign travel. Dr Mgimwa reappeared before the House team yesterday without having made any changes to the estimates, triggering the committee members' fury. They told Mr Mgimwa pointblank that his Budget speech risks being thrown out when he tables it this week. "The government Budget proposals are under the threat of being rejected. Emphasis of recurrent spending rather than development spending is dangerous to the economy, which is already unstable," Zitto Kabwe, the shadow minister for Finance told The Citizen after the Committee's meeting with the minister yesterday. In his Sunday presentation before the PCFEA, Dr Mgimwa came up with similar proposals comprising a development budget of 30 per cent and recurrent budget of 70 per cent. He gave five reasons for his position, one being that the committee's proposals were time-barred and second, the votes presented by the government must be maintained at the same levels because of the "prevailing realities". He further argued that the calculated apportionment of recurrent and development budget must remain at the same level because any deduction of money from recurrent budget would disturb implementation of the whole Budget which, he sad, would hurt productivity of public servants. His fourth reason was that it wasn't easy to alter the Budget day that falls on June 14 because the date has been agreed upon by the other four East African Community member states. The last reason, he stated, was that the government hasn't ignored the views of MPs but has actually taken them up for future utilisation to ensure, for instance, that funds set for development projects are subjected to thorough monitoring and evaluation. A document, which was seen by The Citizen, showed a list of other votes that were yet to be approved by the PCFEA, including, among others: Constitutional Review Commission, Judicial Service Commission and the Attorney General's office. Others are those from the ministry of Foreign Affairs, Directorate of Public Prosecution, Judiciary, Ministry of Justice, Law Reform Commission, and Commission for Human Rights and Good Governance. On Friday, the Finance minister presented his budget proposals, which indicated that the total expenditures for 2012/13 fiscal year would amount to Sh15,045.8 billion, to be collected from domestic and foreign sources. The minister listed among the objectives of the 2012/13 Budget as, among others, attaining economic growth rate of 6.8 per cent, instead of 6.4 per cent of 2011/12. Other objectives include increasing the rate of domestic revenue from 16.9 per cent of GDP to 17.9 per cent, controlling the volume of money supply at the ceiling rate of 18 per cent until June next year and reducing the gap between bank lending and deposit rates. Others are: attaining a stable foreign exchange rate, increasing loans to the private sector up to 20 per cent of GDP in June next year and attaining the foreign exchange reserve that suffice the demand for four and a half months by June 2013. According to the Finance minister, the main pillars of 2012/13 budget, among others, are: attaining a stable economy with sustainable socioeconomic development, availability of reliable power supply and mobilisation communities on the use of natural gas, successful implementation of the five year development plan and stabilisation of a shilling. Other pillars are: putting in place a sound regulation of issuing government securities to public institutions, consolidation of monetary and fiscal policies, commencement of Agricultural Bank of Tanzania, strengthening cooperation with development partners and continuation of the implementation of the policy on decentralisation on by devolution and other ongoing economic reform programmes. |