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

The Public Accounts Committee
Democratising the budget
Budgeting is very much a top-down process. I would like to see a more
participatory approach. The centre dictates the terms of distribution of
government monies and tax receipts. For example, the accounting
officer responsible for government building contracts will say: “This
year the payment due on completed work is US$10 million”. Then, in
the budget, the ministry of finance will say: “This year, we have
allocated US$2m for those contracts”. The result is that projects are not
completed on time or within budget.
The members of parliament will say: “Why is there so much money for
this particular region?” and, “Why not for Mtwara?”, then “Why not
for Mwanza?” These battles go on in parliament all the time. This year,
for the first time, we discussed a set of benchmarks, or priorities, for
the budget in parliament. If we can make the distribution of public
money more transparent and more participatory, we can reduce the
scuffles during the budget session. We are moving towards that.
The real numbers
Priorities need to be determined by parliament. If that is done transparently,
there will be fewer scuffles. In Brazil I’m told that the parliament actually
passes a law prior to the actual budget. The law sets out the priorities; it
says what is going to be spent for A,B,C,D. If you do that, more people will
participate in deciding the priorities for that particular year.
We need a proper understanding of how our economy works. I don’t
accept the argument that countries with very concentrated economic
productive capacities need a highly centralised political system. In
Tanzania, industry contributes about 15% of our total gross domestic
product. Agriculture is close to 44% of GDP. After agriculture, the
productive sectors are mining and tourism.
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