Continued Increase In Public Funds Abuse/Waste Worrying
Abstract
The office of the auditor general on 2nd November, 2017, released a report on the Accounts of the Republic for the financial year ending 31st December 2016. The Jesuit centre for theological reflection is concerned with the current public financial mismanagement in Zambia which keeps getting worse every year without corrective measures. While seven out of twelve categories of irregularities showed some reduction, irregularity such as untouched expenditure remained the highest ranking irregularity at K170 million, an amount that could have doubled 2018 budgetary allocation to Skills Development and enabled hundreds of young school leavers acquire some skills
Description
Zambia has many developmental challenges to continue on the path of wasteful use of public resources. In the last few years, government has struggled to balance its incomes with expenditure partly due to reduced economic growth which has been caused by reduced copper prices on the international market and low electricity supply among others. This has resulted in government recording huge budget deficits of over 6% of GDP per annum way above the projected annual deficit of 3% of GDP. Government has thus been courting the IMF for a US$1.3 billion for balance of payment support. While the economy has shown signs of recovery with projected growth of 4% for 2017 from 3.4% of 2016, government fiscal space is still under serious strain. Seeing that we are on a route to economic recovery stringent public financial management policies should be instituted in our country to ensure that funds are used for the intended purpose in order to uplift lives of the poor.