The opposition in parliament has torn apart the government’s 2011/12 Budget tabled in parliament on Wednesday, this week (June 8th 2011) by the Minister for Finance and Economy, Mr Mustapha Mkullo, describing it all sorts of names.
In fact, it (the official opposition) has already made it clear to the government that come Wednesday next week when the debate on the budget resumes in the House, it will take the government by the horns!
Of course, the government cannot blame anybody except itself for lacking seriousness when handling such core issues.
In short, it should have seen it coming long before it made up its mind to table the controversial budget that was praised by some so-called experts only to be torn apart on the following day!
It had all started with dilly-dallying on issuance of budget books to members of parliament, something that has never been done by the ministry in recent memory.
Mps complained that the government had failed to furnish them with budget books before, Mr Mkullo tabled his budget that was preceded by the state of the economy speech in the august House.
From the outset, the government appears to be afflicted by one major malaise, an attempt to try to appease everybody!
Somebody ought to stand up and tell it (the government) that that is extremely difficult given its meager financial resources.
Actually the best thing for the government would have been to deal only with the following things in its development budget in next financial year, namely, education, health, rails, as opposed to roads and energy.
In short, its development budget should have involved only four ministries of health, education, infrastructure and transport.
Therefore only the foregoing ministries would have received both sets of budgets-recurrent and development expenditure.
As for the other remaining ministries, the government could have accorded them only recurrent budget.
The point is, it is time the government learnt how to work on its priorities instead of its present practice of carrying on board everything when it knows that it does not have the requisite financial resources.
You cannot for instance talk of 13 priorities! That is absurd because once you have 13 priorities, then you don’t have priorities to speak of!
Had the government decided that this time around it would only deal with the energy, railways, education and health problems, it would not have found itself in its present situation in which the opposition is accusing it of lying to the people!
There was absolutely no point of coming up with the kind of budget the government tabled in the parliament this week!
But the question is, has the government learnt anything as it prepares to face the opposition next week? Time will certainly tell.
By the way, one of the present eyesores in the budget include the almost one trillion shillings that has been set aside for allowances!
What is perhaps very unfortunate is that the foregoing whopping sum has been set aside for civil servants who also earn salaries and other fringe benefits!
It is the same kind of providing government houses, almost at a song, to ministers and other top-flight civil servants who already own houses!
And as if that is not bad enough, we are told, and very casually at that, that land-cruisers and other luxury vehicles can now be imported only after the nod of the prime minister!
A serious government simply says no more importation of such vehicles until further notice.
By Attilio Tagalile
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