THE Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in a meeting last Friday expressed its disappointment on the delay of the 2023 budget documents which should have been submitted last week.
It was revealed that the delay will push back the PAC inquiry schedule which should have commenced last week.
According to Parliament Media, the PAC Clerk, Heston Rence said only the 2023 Appropriation Bill has been delivered on Tuesday 8 November 2022, but not the Draft Estimates.
The PAC Chair and Member of Parliament for East Honiara, Douglas Ete, had reiterated during their that the Speaker of the National Parliament will not endorse incomplete documents.
“We have to wait for all the budget documents before we can proceed with our inquiry,” the PAC Chair said.
Leader of Opposition and PAC member, Matthew Wale said what the committee has received was only a partial submission of the 2023 Appropriation Bill 2023.
“We have yet to receive the full budget documents such as the volume 1 strategic outlook, volume 2 recurrent estimates and volume 3 which are the development estimates.”
PAC Member and Small Malaita MP, Rick Houenipwela, questioned why it took it so long for the responsible ministry to hand in the relevant budget documents as they do not want to rush the hearing process as they only have limited time to conduct an inquiry for all line ministries and stakeholders.
The PAC Clerk, Mr Rence said once PAC receives all the required documents by tomorrow, Monday 14th November, the hearing proper should commence on Tuesday or Wednesday.
By FOLLET JOHN
Solomon Star, Newsroom
