Finance Minister warns MDAs

Freetown, Sept. 24 (SLENA) -The Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Dr Khelfala Marrah has warned all Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) that their budgets will not be approved if they fail to present adequate, accurate and detailed budget estimates to stakeholders.

He gave this warning at the ongoing budget discussion programme held at MJ Motel in Port Loko town.

Addressing stakeholders and MDAs at the budget discussion, the Minister warned that he will ask parliament to put on hold the budget of any MDA that fails to present a proper and adequate budget estimate for discussion.

He further warned Permanent Secretaries and vault controllers of every ministry to comply with the procedures that were established by his ministry for the 2014-2016 budget process which he said factors in and supports the implementation as well as the realization of the government’s Agenda for Prosperity.

Dr Marrah maintained that every Permanent Secretary and senior official of ministries, departments and agencies should ensure that the plans are proper and clearly articulated numbers are captured and rationalized, etc and that if any one fails to do that the budget of such department or ministry will not be captured and presented to parliament for approval until and unless they go back to the drawing board to present an adequate estimate.

The Minister of Finance commended the Financial Secretary, Mr. Edmond Koroma and his able team for taking the bold step and stand down MDAs that failed to present proper budget estimates and assured them of his full support as, according to him, substandard planning will undermine the process.

He however made a personate appeal to all vault controllers of MDAs to drill down and take a look at what they have even though they might likely go back to their recurrent levels and take a look at those recurrent expenditure allocations, and asked themselves why they need incremental request each year.

He made it categorically clear that he will put a stop to increase recurrent expenditure and go in for development projects as those monies saved would be used for other developmental projects such as the provision of safe drinking water, good roads, free health care, schools, etc.

Dr Marrah informed his audience that he has to personally monitor this year’s budget by specifically looking at recurrent budget estimate of MDAs for the years 2013 and 2014, and that if he noticed any increment in the 2014 recurrent budget he will slice it down.

The Minister of Finance was quick to caution that development projects do not come on a silver platter, pointing out that as a nation Sierra Leone needs to create savings to support developmental projects, noting that as a ministry they want to capture core capital projects in the database.

HB/MoFED/SLENA

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