Fair management of public expenditure
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By Zechariah Manyok Biar
March 20, 2011 — In every government all over the world, development
takes place only when there are clear plans for developmental
activities. Good plans in themselves are not enough in achieving
sustainable development. There must be commitment to the laid-down
plans in every institution in the government. The implementation of
plans is what matters. And the better way of the implementation of
plans is to ensure that there is fair management of public
expenditure.
Fair management of public expenditure should be result-oriented in
order to meet the requirement of good governance. The Government of
the Republic of South Sudan is now leaning on this direction.
There is a three-year plan going on now under the Ministry of Finance
and Economic Planning in the Government of Southern Sudan in
preparation for the new state of South Sudan. This three-year plan
meets the element of fair public expenditure in good governance, at
least in theory now. The plan becomes practical in July this year
after the full independence of the Republic of South Sudan.
At the level of theory, the plan is looking into the priorities of the
government. These priorities consider the relevance, applicability,
sustainability and effectiveness of program areas in various sectors.
For the plan to be result-oriented, it considers inputs, activities,
outputs, and the immediate outcomes within the next three years.
It is exciting when one follows the process of the above mentioned
plan, but the problem will come at the level of implementation. Bad
governance does not mean that leaders do not know good plans. They
know them but are often reluctant to implement them as they are
planned. Researchers believe that the problem in low-income societies
or governments is that the practice of results-oriented public
expenditure management is very rare.
The implementation that conceals the policy objectives can easily
derail from the intended goal, leading to unwanted expenditure of
public funds and obscure the policies on their true budgetary costs.
In good governance, implementers of plans respect financial procedures
in order to produce their intended results. This is the only way that
public administration can be more efficient and effective.
The procedures of implementation should always be guided by the
objectives of the plan which are clear and precise on the results
expected of each employee and service provider. In this case, personal
responsibilities are needed. Any institution, whether public or
private, pays its workers because of what they do for the institution.
It is a waste of money if individuals who do nothing are paid for
doing nothing.
Some people may argue that the workers in the Government of Southern
Sudan do not do what is expected of them sometimes because they do not
have any idea on how to do it, since we just came out of the bush.
This could be true, but it is still not an excuse for spending public
money on individuals who do not do what is expected of them.
There are solutions to the above mentioned situation. One of the
solutions is job training that helps the government make sure that
every employee knows what is expected of him or her. Workers are not
just needed to do what they are told to do; they are also expected to
plan on how to maximize performances in their respective areas of
responsibilities. These plans do not need the President, the Vice
President, the Ministers, or the Governors to do them. They are works
of directors and managers.
Directors or managers in various service areas should not stick to
one-side-fit-it-all style. They must be flexible, creative, and
innovate to seek efficiency in the improvements of services. They must
be realistic in the choosing of their target areas of activities and
periodically review their functionality so that they identify and
remove deficiencies in the structure of incentives. Without a
continuous assessment, nothing could be achieved. Remedial actions
take place only where there are assessments.
The problem we have now in the Government of Southern Sudan is that
contracts are given to contractors with so little amount of assessment
that they either do a very poor job like the roads that we see in some
states or they do not move further enough to convince the public on
whether it was worth spending a particular amount of money on a
particular project. Some of these contractors are enriching themselves
at the expense of public because of deficiencies in our system.
In order for our Government to ensure fair management of public
expenditure, a clear procedure of assessment should be put in place to
identify underperformance in any project in order to terminate such a
contract and look for alternative service providers. Those who perform
above expectations must often be rewarded to encourage underperformers
do better job.
Zechariah Manyok Biar, BA. Edu., MACM, MSSW. He can be reached at
[email protected]
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