The Minister of Finance Honorable Goodall Gondwe has announced some upward adjustments to some Government Departments and Ministries in response to concerns by members and Budget and Finance Committee report raised during the budget debate that was curtailed on Tuesday 23rd September 2014.
On Wednesday afternoon hon. Gondwe when winding up the debate he noted several additional allocations among them are additional allocation to the health sector, police and Constituency Development Fund.
For the Health Sector the Minister said an extra K7.4 billion has been provided on the drug budget for a start, as governemtn explore other avenues of bridging the gap further.
He said out of this sum, K2.5 billion will go to central hospitals, another K2.5 billion to District Hospitals and K1 billion has been allocated for anti-malarial drugs and Tuberculosis treatment. K966 million for the Expanded Programme on Immunization while K34 million to supplement the current allocation on Family Planning.
He also said an additional K500 million has also been provided for diagnostic medical equipment and Government has decided to set aside K150 million for the training of cancer medical specialists.
The Minister pointed out that resource pressures within the health sector should be looked at as a wake-up call to every Malawian as Government cannot meet all the needs in the sector. Hon. Gondwe urged everyone “to jealously safeguard the utilization of the resources that have been allocated to this sector, and to avoid mismanagement, misappropriation, and pilferage of this valuable lifeline.”
Additional sum of K1 billion has been allocated to facilitate the process of upgrading the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) software, and to finance preparatory expenditures leading towards the acquisition of new software which will bring the total allocation for IFMIS improvements to K1.5 billion.
Malawi Police Service will receive an additional K500 million for the procurement of motor vehicles so as to ease the mobility issues currently facing the service and K50 million has been made to the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) to enhance the vigilant monitoring of money laundering activities.
The Judiciary has received a further K200 million in the development budget, to kick start works on the Judicial Complex in Lilongwe while Electoral Commission will receive an additional allocation of K150 million for bye-elections.
But the Constituency Development Fund allocation will be adjusted by K3 million per constituency which will increase the fund to K10 million per constituency.
Clarification pertaining to observation made by the Budget and Finance Committee that, the Anti-Corruption Bureau has only been allocated 1% and not 167 in 2014/15 relative to 2013/14 as the Minister presented in his Budget statement, Gondwe said “this increase relates to Other Recurrent Transactions only. The total allocation to the vote actually increases by 5%, because there is no development budget allocation to the vote this year, while a provision was made in 2013/14”
On dual allocations of K2 billion and K800 million made to Office of President and Cabinet (OPC) and to the Ministry of Agriculture for the Greenbelt Initiative project, respectively Gondwe said this has been done on account of the fact that “the Ministry of Agriculture is responsible for the technical aspects of the project, while OPC is the secretariat”
The Finance Minister has also assured members that the resources that will be appropriated to the various votes are secure and will be used as approved and that no other form of ‘Cashgate’ by justifying that “Government has developed a comprehensive public finance management reform programme aimed at addressing the weaknesses that have been identified”
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