Islands Business - Business: TIGHT SCRUTINY UNEARTHS BUDGET DISCREPANCIES

No provincial accounts audit

Evan Wasuka
Last month, the Manasseh Sogavare government tabled its first budget since coming into power. But what makes this year’s S$987 million budget all the more significant is that this is the most scrutinised budget in the history of the Solomon Islands.

Under scrutiny...the Public Accounts Committee scrutinises the 2007 Budget Bill.

For the first time the parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, made up of a bipartisan group, for long a toothless tiger, scrutinised the budget estimates of each government’s 27 departments ahead of the tabling of the budget bill.

The power of the committee saw the government delay the tabling of the budget by two weeks to make amendments to the budget papers before it could be tabled.

“We’re making the process more transparent and accountable,” said committee chairman, Francis Zama.
Permanent secretaries of each department were summoned and over a nine-day period they presented and defended their budgets to the committee in a forum open to the public and media.

The outcomes and recommendations of the committee sitting were then submitted to the country’s 50 parliamentarians ahead of the budget vote.

Clerk to Parliament Taiasi Sanga said the committee’s work shows an important development in the life of the Solomons’ parliament and its five committees, which for the first time were given a new lease of life through UNDP’s parliament strengthening programme.

Much of that funding has gone into the creation of a parliamentary secretariat which provides secretaries and resource support to the committees.

“An independent and well resourced parliament is vital in keeping government accountable and transparent,” said Sanga, who as parliament’s head administrator, had to defend her own budget before the committee.

Headed by parliamentarian Zama along with Auditor-General Floyd Fatai as his deputy, the committee had been expeditious in their scrutiny of the accounts of government departments.

The committee’s scrutiny picked up certain discrepancies that would have otherwise gone unnoticed.

Among these included a S$2.3 million salary allocation for the prime minister’s office. When the committee compared these figures to the actual payroll, there was a S$300,000 shortfall in the budget.

At a glance, the budget showed the prime minister’s political appointees were among the government’s highest paid with contract packages of up to S$240,000 for some believed to have low levels of qualifications.

Their enquiries into the police ministry’s accounts uncovered an unallocated trip to Taiwan for training by the police’s close protection unit responsible for guarding the prime minister.

With the publicity generated by the trip, it was revealed that based on the prime minister’s orders the unit had ditched an Australian training package in favour of a Taiwanese one, as well as dumping its Australian advisors serving under the Regional Assistance Mission attached to the squad.

The permanent secretary for the provincial government ministry revealed his ministry had no way of knowing if grants given to the country’s nine provincial governments were spent on what they were allocated for.

“It’s like money being sent into a black hole,” said an exasperated provincial government permanent secretary, Tione Bugotu.

He said the situation had been like that for the past 28 years with most provincial governments not auditing their accounts.

The lack of financial accountability for the provincial governments will be a worry for the country’s architects designing the draft federal constitution aimed at giving the provinces more control over their affairs.

One of the major worries that emerged from the committee’s deliberations was that despite the high levels of unemployment, the country’s public service was severely understaffed with huge numbers of vacancies.

Lack of qualified staff was by far the most common obstacle faced by heads of government’s ministries.

For this year, 1052 vacancies have to be filled by the public service. These vacancies make up S$41 million out of the total payroll of S$185 million.

Budget passed

After nearly a week of debate, the government’s 2007 Budget was passed quietly, overshadowed by a looming motion of no confidence in the Sogavare Government.
Little was altered from Finance Minister Gordon Darcy Lilo’s original bill, except for a S$11 million reduction in the Civil Aviation Ministry’s allocation bringing the total budget to just over S$977 million.
The 2007 Budget which the government has touted as the key to its “bottoms up approach” to rural development was criticised by the opposition as being irresponsible.
For the first time, this year’s budget session was televised on the local One News Television station giving Honiara residents, a first hand look at the colourful, entertaining and sometimes dreary goings-on in the Vaivaya Ridge chambers.
With the budget approved, the Sogavare Government has been given the green light to carry out its development policies.