Maravi

CSPR launches budget execution barometer

CSPR launches budget execution barometer
By Sututu Katundu
Fri 03 Dec. 2010, 04:00 CAT

A CIVIL society organisation yesterday launched the national budget execution barometer, which seeks to measure the government’s performance in overall implementation of the national document.

Civil Society for Poverty Reduction executive director Patrick Mucheleka said the barometer would respond to the country’s poor performance by rating and tracking the government on service delivery and budget execution in specific critical areas.

Mucheleka said the barometer would also look at how budget allocations affected people’s livelihoods at community and national levels.

“It measures and rates government in terms of timeliness in releasing funds, adequacy, participatory in the bedrock of indicators that are used to calculate the barometer,” Mucheleka said.

The indicators include the citizens’ participation and civic engagement in developing processes which focus on issues of promoting participatory budgeting by linking state obligations with citizen entitlements thus promoting community voices in the decision-making process.

The second theme is pro-poor resource management execution and management which focuses on the prioritisation of resources to key development areas such as health, education, water and sanitation, social protection, agriculture and infrastructure, execution of these resources as well as ring-fencing of pro-poor development allocations.

The third theme is transparency and accountability which focuses on mechanisms being used to ring-fence pro-poor resources, accountability of these resources and the mechanisms used by the local and national government structures to explain and justify its decisions, policies and programmes.

The other indicators focus on basic service delivery and management, equity and human development.

CSPR said the government should place more emphasis on poverty reduction programmes through increased allocations in the national budget to expedite economic production and the rural people’s partcipation.

It said the government needed to conceptualise human development as a series of investments to increase capacity, to promote a more equitable and inclusive society and to catalyse accelerated, broad-based economic growth.

CSPR proposed the scaling up of investment in rural development programmes with priority placed on rural infrastructure development, small scale farmers and micro business.

CSPR advised the government to stimulate equity initiatives within various ministries and improve on priority setting and targeting resources to identified priorities.

The organisation said the government should strengthen public participation in the budgetary process by deliberately creating spaces for civil society participation.
CSPR said fiscal policies also needed to address equitable redistribution of resources and investment in high pay-back areas.

posted by MrK @ 6:22 AM