The Western Provincial Public Accounts Committee (PPAC) has been facing a hard time after tackling its first onerous of scrutinizing the appropriation Bill 2022/2023 have again been bogged down with budget shortcomings.
This was according to the Chairman of the PPAC, Hon. Isaac Vula Tatapu.
He highlighted this issue during last week’s Full Assembly Meeting on Friday at the Chacha Conference Room, Gizo Western Province.
The PPAC Chairman, Hon. Isaac Tatapu said it is not new as repetitive and nor lapse in the budget process have again reoccurred, inferring disregard by Government Officials of the observations and recommendations amplified in almost all PPAC reports.
He said for instance not all related documents linked to the draft budget (Appropriation) Bill 2002/20223 such as Budget formulation strategy, Fiscal policy guidelines, manpower costing in terms of personal emoluments and other benefits were presented on the due date.
“The rescheduling of meeting, commencement for three times in a row to await documents is a time prolonging that is very costly endeavor and could cause budget overruns and unnecessary dentin the provincial fund.
“Observations and recommendations are important conclusions, emanating from analytic review by PPAC of the Executives Government’s spending plan of available public funds to cater for people’s needs,” he said.
“Taking systematication on the recommendation, in the long term, brings immerse socio-economic benefits for the people and Government holding the costs constant while decreasing the cost, thus the elimination of reduction of needless extravagant cost,” he added.
He added the ruling government has been in office for no less than two and half months ago to dispense the legal mandate of the PGA 1997 and Subsidiary Ordinances- Financial Management Ordinances (FMO) 2018 and the WPG Policy Statement 2022/20223 that is tabled this WPA sitting.
Tatapu said PPAC has not been able to thoroughly clean through all the policy statements because of time constraints.
“The Policy statement for today’s government is ’Good Governance and Rural Ri-Direction (GGRDR) ‘The Coalition for Good Governance and Rural Redirection,” he said.
However, he further added the main issue lies here of the shortcomings and other main factors is the budget formulation is no more than that of one, Resource Generation and second, Controlling the Expenditures.
“And the rest are all contributory factors or allied problems which crop up during the budget and implementation process.
“This includes problem of higher inflation rates, tall unemployment levels, rising current expenditures, increasing needs for development expenditure, higher imports costs, limited number of exportable items and low export earnings, rising prices, frequent shortages of essential goods, limited revenue base, license dodgers and above all larger expectations of the people from the government to do everything from creating opportunities and social services to undertake developments projects in their ward,” the PPAC Chairman, Tatapu said.
By ULUTAH GINA
GIZO NEWS BUREAU
