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Tendai Gukutikwa
Post Reporter
THE Ministry of Finance and Economic Development has implored Government departments to effectively utilise public resources while adding value to budgeted money.
Speaking during a two-day high level political compact dialogue workshop held at a local hotel last week, Finance Director in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, Mrs Arina Manyanya said her ministry is coming with measures that will allow for transparency, accountability and responsibility when it comes to utilising budget allocated funds.
The meeting was hosted by the Ministry of Women Affairs, Community, Small and Medium Enterprises Development and funded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
“To add value to budgeted money for Government projects, while curtailing abuse of public resources, Government has put in place measures that will dissuade service providers from committing fraud and price goods and services that were supposed to be cheap, five or four times higher.
“Government found out when we had the mid-term budget that service providers and businesses were overpricing their goods and services when selling to Government through tenders.
“Such actions drained the budget and this resulted in Government putting up measures that control such malpractice. The measures allow for Government to do a due diligence exercise whereby officers go into the market and check the actual prices of the services or goods.
“As a result, the procurement of services by Government departments slowed down since some ministries do not have the capacity,” she said.
Mrs Manyanya said the incapacitation due to slowed down procurement of services led to the halting of some Government programmes.
She added that Treasury is aware that there are ministries like the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education which are not capacitated to procure, hence Government is working to rectify the issue.
“What we want is value for money. As Government, we do not want to procure services and goods just for the sake of procuring.
“We want to procure something that will benefit the people of Zimbabwe. The market price of services and goods should be reasonable and match the value of the goods.
“Our mission is to ensure effective value for money or effective utilisation of public resources,” she said.
She added that in due course, Government will come up with a standard list of goods and prices for use when procuring such, especially for basic commodities that are needed in the different Government departments to ensure improved service delivery.
Mrs Manyanya further implored civil servants to adequately capacitate themselves and practice due diligence when preparing their projects and programmes proposals.
She said they are having challenges with some ministries that are still experiencing a brain drain due to the new measures that were put in place in terms of procurement of goods and services.
“When we approve the national budget, ministries should have a proper breakdown of the programmes they will be implementing the following year and how much they would want and those programmes to be implemented.
“We however, have a problem whereby some ministries wait until the budgeted money is released and they start to plan on what to do with the money.
“The major challenge is that money allocated to a relevant ministry on the budget cannot carry over to the following year,” said Mrs Manyanya.
The National Budget for 2023 was presented to Parliament recently and the total budget envelope for 2023 is $4,5 trillion.
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