The Constitution and the Public Finance Management Act provide a fairly sound legal framework for Parliament to monitor the use of public funds expended from the national budget.
In the House with John Makamure
We should not be experiencing the current rampant abuse and mismanagement of public resources if provisions in these statutes were being enforced.
Part 4 of the Act is largely to do with preparation of financial statements and reporting to Parliament. Sections 32, 33, 34 and 35 compel ministries to submit monthly and quarterly financial and accompanying reports to their respective portfolio committees.
Besides the afore-mentioned provisions of the Public Finance Management Act, Section 119(3) of the Constitution states that “all institutions and agencies of the State and government at every level are accountable to Parliament”. It goes without saying that Parliament is the embodiment of citizens’ aspirations and interests and that these citizens look up to their representatives to ensure that public resources are used in the interest of the public.
Government has adopted the concept of performance management or results-based management as its policy guiding the delivery of public services. Performance budgeting is therefore expected to be the guiding principle when formulating and implementing the budget.
Members of Parliament and other demand side actors, such as civil society organisations, must focus on performance or results when monitoring public resource management.
It is of limited use for ministries to simply submit financial statements to Parliament that merely focus on income and expenditure without submitting accompanying reports that explain the outputs and outcomes arising from that expenditure.
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For example, people out there are not very much interested in how much has been spent during a given period on health as these are just numbers. Instead, they are more interested in what the amount spent has produced in terms of number of health personnel trained, where they have been deployed and what has happened to health indicators such as maternal, infant and child mortality rates.
These are the questions that the MPs and civil society actors must be posing when engaging ministries on budget performance reports. They can only do so if they apply social accountability tools in public resource management.
Social accountability entails the right of citizens to obtain justifications and explanations for the use of public resources from those entrusted with the responsibility for their management in order to progressively realise human rights.
Officials and service providers have the corresponding duty not only to produce such justifications, but to take corrective action in instances where public resources are not effectively utilised. Citizens have the right to demand these justifications and explanations from the State when it fails to provide them adequately and corrective action should be taken where required.
The rights-based social accountability monitoring framework focuses on the entire public resource management system of the State. This approach is based on the premise that there are five basic processes through which states manage public resources to deliver services that realise the socio-economic rights of citizens. The five processes are strategic planning and resource allocation; expenditure management; performance management; public integrity management; and oversight.
When compiling their quarterly reports for submission to Parliament as required by the law, Parliament and civil society should insist that ministries address these five processes of public resource management.
This will provide portfolio committees and citizens with adequate information and a clearer picture of how each ministry is managing public resources under its jurisdiction. It is only through this way that Parliament can be able to effectively play its constitutionally mandated oversight function, which is to call the Executive to account for its actions.
Some of the key questions to ask under strategic planning and resource allocation include whether the ministry’s strategic plan has been informed by a rigorous and up-to-date needs analysis of the people and to what extent the allocated resources are linked to the ministry’s strategic plan.
Under expenditure management, it is mainly about finding out if the ministries spent funds for the intended purposes as approved by Parliament and whether proper payment procedures and financial controls over the ministry’s spending of public funds were followed in all instances.
Performance management is an important stage in the public resource management system. Parliament and civil society must find out if ministries implemented the planned activities as set out in their strategic plans effectively, efficiently and economically?
What explanations do the ministries have for any targets that were not met during the period under review and the likely impact on citizens of the ministry’s failure to meet targets?
Public integrity management relate to corruption and abuse of public resources. Some of the key questions to ask include whether there were any reported cases of abuse or misuse of public resources in the ministry?
What corrective action was taken to address ineffective or abuse of public resources? What mechanisms exist in the ministry to address and prevent ineffective use or abuse of public resources?
Oversight questions can include the following: Is the ministry aware of its reporting obligation to Parliament and the Auditor General as set out in the Public Finance Management Act?
Has the ministry addressed observations and recommendations of the Auditor General and relevant parliamentary portfolio committee on its previous financial and performance reports? What challenges is the ministry facing in meeting its reporting requirements to Parliament and the Auditor General as set out in the Public Finance Management Act? Does the public have access to the ministry’s performance reports, strategic plans etc?
It is only through such a robust rights -based social accountability approach in public resource management that we can begin to see a strong and accountable public finance management system in Zimbabwe. It will be business as usual in ministries if Parliament does not put its act together and effectively carry out its constitutional mandate as outlined under Section 299.
John Makamure is the Executive Director of the Southern African Parliamentary Support Trust. Feedback: [email protected]
