By Momodou Jarju
The Gambia’s finance minister has explained to lawmakers in Banjul on Wednesday the reason for the delay in disbursement of funds to ministries for onward implementation of their programmes.
Seedy Keita said his-led ministry operates a cash budget and allocations are made based on the availability of resources.
“Cash releases are made during the first week of the month to their MDAs (Ministries, Departments, and Agencies) and the amount allocated to them is based on the cash available,” he added in response to a question raised by Foni Bintang constituency lawmaker, Bakary K. Badjie. The young legislator asked the minister to state his ministry’s intention to tackle the delay in disbursement of funds to ministries, especially in the area of operational cost.
Unsatisfied with the minister’s answer, Lawmaker Badjie in his supplementary question queried as to why there is no money when it’s already budgeted.
Minister Keita replied that the budget is as good as a plan which doesn’t impute that the money is in the bank, saying it depends on how much money is collected and how much money they can pay out.
“And what the budget approves is the plan of revenue, plan of expenditure. But that doesn’t mean that those expenditures or the revenues are backed by money that can be spent. If we have a situation whereby our revenue projections are coming forth as expected, definitely we will not even do cash allocation, every entity would be able to spend their budget as was approved,” the minister explained.
Responding further, the public officer said their allocation cannot be based on what is in the budget if the cash is not there to support it.
“The logical support point will be, why don’t you borrow? But we have a borrowing ceiling. As we all know, our debt level is very elevated and at any moment in time, we have what we call net domestic borrower requirements that we cannot borrow beyond. So our allocation decision takes into account three variables,” Minister Keita said.
“The variables, the cash inflow collected for the month, the expenditure required, and how much we can borrow to support allocation to the sectors. In a typical month, we allocate more to the sectors than the cash available by adding to the borrowing. But the borrowing amount cannot exceed the ceiling set.”
Asked by member for Sami constituency, Alfusainey Ceesay, whether priority is given on a need basis, Minister Keita responded in the affirmative.
“The priority sectors are health, education, and infrastructure and other exigencies of the government,” he said.
