20 Mar 2017

Leader of Opposition (LOO), Mr Duma Boko believes that the recurrence of supplementary expenditures brought in Parliament every year indicates that there could be problems in the government budgeting system.

Mr Boko therefore urged Parliament to find out what could be causing these supplementary requests and advise accordingly.

He was commenting on the financial paper number three, through which the Minister of Finance and Economic Development sought Parliament to approve supplementary estimates for the 2016/17 financial year on March 17.

Among the supplementary requests, the minister asked Parliament to approve a P47 million supplementary expenditure for the Ministry of Defence, Justice and Security and P15.5 million for the Directorate on Intelligence and Security Services (DISS).

Mr Boko said it had become a recurring practice for Parliament to be saddled with approving supplementary expenditures that could have otherwise been properly budgeted for through the normal process.

He thus called for clear criteria by which expenses could be brought to Parliament as supplementary expenditure.

“I have a serious difficulty with the process where there is no objective set or criteria laid out openly and publicly by which we must weigh each and every request that comes under the rubric of the supplementary item, so that we can determine if it was reasonably foreseeable. Not so much that we turn it down, but so that we can then realise that there is a problem in the system somewhere, which needs urgent attention,” the Gaborone Bonnington North MP said.

Mr Boko agreed for the Ministry of Defence, Justice and Security to be given supplementary funds, P32 million of which will be used to augment budget for Botswana Police Service.

“It is important to give the police service enough resources because they are doing an important job of fighting crime,” he said.

However, he did not welcome the P15.5 million supplementary requests for DISS saying “I have serious difficulty with the non-disclosure regarding expenditure of DISS. There should be proper checks on the expenditure of DISS,” before requesting for an amendment deleting the paragraph relating to DISS from the supplementary requests.

Nevertheless, the amendment was declined after a vote and Parliament approved the supplementary requests. ENDS