December 13, 2021
BY MOHAMED M. SESAY
On Friday the 10th December 2021, the Budget Advocacy Network (BAN) has launched another scorecard on the selected mandatory information disclosure as per the 2016 Public Financial Management Act and its 2018 regulations.
The scorecard noticed remarkable improvement in the number of published documents from 53% in August 2021-70% in November 2021.
In his statement, Abu Bakarr Kamara National Coordinator of the Budget Advocacy Network (BAN), said their work at BAN is centered around Public Financial Management of which transparency and accountability is key among the work they do. He added that in any ideal democracy, Financial transparency and Financial accountability are very key in promoting good governance adding that, they want to push government to actually work in line with what the Public Financial Act states.
He added that since last year, they having been looking at the document that government should publish and the date those documents were published. He emphasized that the work is to follow up on what the Public Financial Management Act says in ensuring that MDAs particularly the Ministry of Finance comply with the PFM Act.
Abu Bakarr Kamara assured that they also believe in constructive engagement with MDAs in order to effect the needed change in Public Financial Management. He disclosed that when they produced their first report, they engaged the Ministry of Finance and some actions were taken by the ministry.
“Our last Publication was in August and another one in November. We have seen some improvement in terms of document produced and published. I want to say congratulations to the Ministry of Finance but that is not the end of our work. We will continue to push to ensure that what they supposed to produce is produced and what should be published is published on time”, he said.
The Economist Analyst for BAN Abu Bakarr Tarawalie said the role of BAN is to monitor how government and line institutions are complying with provision in the Public Finance Management Act of 2016. He added that they have examined the dates of publications as per the PFM Act 2016 and the result is published in the scorecard.
Tarawalie continued that key areas were monitored also which include fiscal documents produced and published; fiscal documents produced but not published and fiscal documents not produced at all. He further noted that they also looked whether or not fiscal documents/information produced are published on time. He concluded by disclosing that they noticed a remarkable improvement in the number of published documents from 53% in August 2021-70% in November 2021.
Dr. Ilara Mahdi Deputy Director of Budget in the Ministry of Finance expressed profound thanks to BAN for the initiative in promoting Public Financial Management. She added that the initiative speaks to the heart of the Ministry of Finance and the Government by extension to improve on transparency and accountability in Public Financial Management.
Dr. Mahdi also commended that the work of BAN is contributing to government efforts in order to be more accountable and transparent. From the government perspective, Dr Mahdi disclosed that there are a number of reasons why government wants to be more accountable and transparent. Among such reasons, She said it gives government the opportunity to explain to tax payers what their monies are been used for; tax payers to feel belonged to the development process; and also gives an opportunity to demonstrate to the people the developmental policies and projects that government is implementing.
She acknowledged that a government that is transparent and accountable stands better chance to attract more resources adding that, the resources that go into the National Budget are from the tax payers as well from external sources. She added that most of the donors want to see how their monies are utilized and government effort to promote transparency and accountability helps the donors to make a case in providing more funds for the government.