Drastic measures to save Sh270bn
By Mkinga Mkinga
THE CITIZEN
The government is introducing a number of drastic measures aimed cutting spending in order to plug the revenue collection gaps and to cover for the budget support cut by donors.
The Citizen has reliably learnt that for two days this week, permanent secretaries from all ministries held a closed door meeting chaired by the Chief Secretary at State House in which the measures to cut costs were agreed.
The meeting came out with resolutions on three areas which would see the government raise Sh270 billion. This month General Budget Support donors said they will reduce funding for the forthcoming financial year by $220 million (about Sh308 billion).
Some of the agreed issues were not new but the meeting agreed that this time the enforcement of the issues should be strict in order to make sure the savings are obtained.
A source from the meeting, who declined to be named, said areas that the government would look to save funds include fuel used to run government vehicles, foreign trips by top executives as well as seminar and workshops.
Under the new government vehicles uses regulations, apart from the top three officials in the ministry, namely the minister, deputy minister and a permanent secretary, the remaining cadre would be required to use private cars with the government allocating allowances for fuel.
The source hinted that measures taken on checking on the use of government vehicles and consumption of fuel would enable the government to save up to Sh56 billion in a year.
Referring to the current situation, the official said for instance that the ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism alone uses 20,000 litres of fuel each week. Factoring in inflation, the government has pegged the price of a litre of petrol at Sh2,500, meaning that this ministry alone spends Sh50 million on fuel each week.
We have agreed that in each ministry only three top officials, the minister, deputy minister and a permanent secretary should be entitled to fuel. Others will be required to use alternative transport which does not consume a lot of fuel, said the source.
This move would see drastic reduction on the use of fuel guzzling luxury vehicles, something which many people have been advising the government to do.
In the meetings held on Wednesday and Thursday, the permanent secretaries also agreed to put controls over the workshops, which was found to be another area where a lot of government funds were used without meaningful returns.
From now on, it has been agreed, the Prime Minister should strictly resume the role of scrutinising applications for seminars and workshops.
Workshops and seminar can only be held after being sanctioned by the Prime Minister, said the source.
Recently the Prime Minister reported that the government had saved about Sh5 billion, after cutting down expenditure on purchasing government vehicles. He, however, admitted that the exercise had met some resistance from some government officials.
Another area, which the government looks forward to save billions of shillings, is control over overseas travels by government officials.
From now onwards, government officials who want to travel abroad, including ministers, should seek permission from the Prime Ministers Office.
Those wishing to travel abroad should persuade the Prime Minister that the trip has economic benefits to the country which cannot be attained without it. The Prime Minister will be the sole authority to sanction overseas travels for government officials, said the source.
The source said the Chief Secretary had issued a notice some months ago on foreign trips which is very clear and if followed the country can save a lot of money.
We have agreed that if a minister wants to travel abroad on government issues then the Prime Minister should endorse the trip after evaluating its benefit to the country
if that is strictly adhered the government can save up to Sh1 billion, the source said.
He added that the Chief Secretary has been empowered to approve foreign trips of Permanent Secretaries with directors have to get permission from their respective Permanent Secretaries.
But it has been agreed that all foreign trips have to answer all doubts including how the country will benefit out of that trip and soon after the return of those who have been allowed to travel abroad, they should write a report about the trip indicating how the country was going to benefit.
It has been observed that most of those foreign trips are being used by officials as conduit to get money... they dont care about the benefits to the country, he said noting that there were some government officials who have been travelling outside the country 16 times in a year.
According to the source the Tourism and Natural Resources ministry spent Sh1.2 billion for foreign trips only in the last financial year.
A recent report by Policy Forum, a non-governmental organisation based in Dar es Salaam, said the foreign trips had become quite lucrative for public officials. It said each official was earning between Sh403,000 and Sh546,000 daily while overseas on government business.
According to the report, the office of the President and cabinet secretariat is the highest recipient of funds for allowances, and will gobble up to Sh148.7 billion this financial year alone.
The national assembly is the second with Members of Parliament and staff earning a total of Sh36.8 billion in allowances this year. Their vote rose by 40 per cent over the Sh26.3 billion allocated in the previous year.