Maravi

'Lupando's extra expenditure was unanticipated'

'Lupando's extra expenditure was unanticipated'
By Mwala Kalaluka
Sunday August 17, 2008 [04:00]

SECRETARY to the Treasury Evans Chibiliti has said the K10 billion supplementary expenditure incurred by former vice-president Lupando Mwape on his ‘extraordinary’ travels during the 2006 elections campaign was unanticipated.

And Chibiliti has bemoaned the difficulties involved in effectively budgeting for food rations for the Ministry of Defence.

Explaining the supplementary expenditures incurred on 45 budget lines in 2006 before the Parliamentary Committee on Estimates on Friday, Chibiliti said such situations were very difficult to control.

“This is one supplementary I remember quite clearly,” Chibiliti said in response to a concern raised by Lukulu East ULP member of parliament Batuke Imenda.

“I do recall that during the last general elections, His Excellency (President Mwanawasa) had delegated a lot of his assignments to the vice-president.”

He said due to health reasons, President Mwanawasa confined his campaign trips to provincial centres while Mwape, who is now Zambia’s Ambassador to China, covered the outlying districts.

“There were also regional assignments, the President had minimal travels during that period,” Chibiliti said.

He said ordinarily, funds to facilitate Mwape’s travels on behalf of the President should have been drawn from the President’s vault.

Chibiliti said after thorough considerations, it was realised that it would not be sufficiently transparent to get funds from the President’s vault to finance the vice-president’s travels.

He said this was the rationale behind the supplementation of the vice-president’s travel vault to a tune of about K9 billion from the K1 billion that was budgeted for.

“It was a very large amount, we all saw it,” Chibiliti said. “This is very difficult to control, where the number two executive of the nation has to move, especially if he has to move under the instruction of the President…We did not anticipate that the President would make this degree of delegation.”

Last week, members of the estimates committee expressed shock that such a huge supplementary expenditure was incurred by the Office of the Vice-President to facilitate for Mwape’s extraordinary campaign trips prior to the 2006 tripartite elections.
Chibiliti also said it would be folly for controlling officers in public service to think that supplementary budgets were the way to go.

“It makes meaningless the process of planning,” he said, adding that it would be unrealistic to approve supplementary budgets in a willy-nilly manner given the constrained resource envelope.

Chibiliti said the budgetary requirements for spending agencies in the public service last year was about K60 trillion but they had to do with K13 trillion.

And Chibiliti said there was need for the Ministry of Defence to sufficiently budget for food rations and avoid the trend of asking for supplementary budgets in the middle of the financial year.

Labels: CORRUPTION, LUPANDO MWAPE

posted by MrK @ 3:23 PM