Mochudi — Underspending of the development budget is a worrisome trend, Finance minister, Ms Peggy Serame has said.
Officially launching the budget campaign in Mochudi on Wednesday, Ms Serame said ministries continued to spend extremely low amount of the bulk of their budget.
She said the recurrent budget was the most utilised because it was the operational budget that accounted for day to day running of government business. She however stressed that she was equally concerned as to whether it was used efficiently.
"I am saying this because even with the recurrent budget it has proved that its spending is only fast-tracked towards the end of the fiscal year."
As at the first three months of the current fiscal year, Ms Serame said most ministries had spent less than one per cent of their development budget, noting that the spate of low spending affected development projects.
She said under normal circumstances, as of now about 25 per cent of the development budget should have been spent.
"This worries me because it points to a number of challenges relating to delayed project implementation or inaccurate costing," she said.
Project implementation, she said had been marred by a plethora of challenges among them inadequate prioritisation, project appraisal and sequencing, poor costing and insufficient monitoring leading to time and cost overruns.
Other problems, she said, related to delayed commencement of projects and inadequate capacity and experience in government and private sector.
Among the ministries that have performed better as at the first three months of the current fiscal year, she said were the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development with an expenditure above 40 per cent, followed by Ministry of Minerals and Energy at 38 per cent, Agriculture at 27 per cent and Lands and Water Affairs at 24 per cent.
She attributed their performance to some obvious projects that the said ministries were undertaking such as water projects, Ipelegeng and Community Constituency projects, electricity projects as well as food and security programmes among others.
Other ministries, she noted, had scored less than 20 per cent in their expenditure, while a total of eight had spent less than one per cent.
Among those are ministries of Entrepreneurship, Trade and Industry, Justice as well as Foreign Affairs.
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Meanwhile, she said her ministry had put in place some measures intended to improve implementation, adoption of three stage project appraisal system, adoption of new procurement model of Development Manager model to assist in improving the delivery of infrastructure projects as well as enhancement of the Development Project Monitoring System.
Ms Serame said the ministry was also developing a budget strategy paper that was informed by the National Vision and government priorities.
The budget campaign aimed at ensuring that Batswana participate and contribute to the national budget preparation.
Ms Serame said the budget campaign was the beginning of the journey of inclusivity, governance and stakeholder participation in the budgeting process and allowed Batswana to express their aspirations during the budgeting process.
Through the campaign, the ministry has initiated two vital channels for engagement, in addition to existing social media platforms to include the introduction of a WhatsApp Number (+267 74 960 078) and an Email Address (budgetcomments@gmail.com or mof-budget@gov.bw) which the public can use to share their comments and contribution to the 2024/25 budget.
BOPA
