Bunge-Lenye-Meno-A-Parliament-with-Teeth-for-Tanzania-LAXNNAJ547

The Public Accounts Committee
Very little information actually reaches parliament. When you go to the
American embassy, they say: “We are sending so much money to A, B,
C and D”. Probably the worst example is the United Nations High
Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). Refugees arrive in Tanzania and
the UNHCR sends money, vehicles and food to help refugees.
Meanwhile, we have no idea what is actually happening: how on earth
can donors expect us to hold the government accountable?
General Budget Support is a very different approach. Under GBS all
the monies from a donor or donors go into the government’s
consolidated fund. They are managed by the government of Tanzania.
They are declared to parliament, and to the public, in an Appropriation
Bill. This process enables an entirely different chain of accountability,
which forms part of a more open process.
The problem of parallel accountability
In every method of allocating aid, the democratic principle at stake is
always the same. Donors are wary of being accused of intervening in
domestic politics, but it is not uncommon to hear that a certain sum of
money - designated for, say, the construction of a road - will not
be allocated during a particular budget because the government
has ‘misbehaved’.
When this happens, our system is moving away from domestic
accountability through parliament towards a parallel process of
accountability to foreign donors. This is wrong. The mere presence of
donors in Tanzania has in some way diluted the power of parliament. It
has diluted democracy.
59