Finance Minister Should Not Be ‎Involved In Budget Preparation‎

By Scott Morgan

By Adan H Iman, Los Angeles, USA

Governments everywhere in the world are vulnerable to abuse and waste of public funds. In an effort to prevent this, and to strengthen public confidence in the operation of government, internal accounting controls and administrative controls are used to safeguard public assets. An important tool in this accounting and administrative controls is the segregation of duties.

During the administration of the late President Mr. Mohamed I. Egal, the duties of revenue collection and the preparation of the budget were segregated. There was somebody responsible for revenue collection and another for the budget. It is the same in other governmental organizations everywhere. But in the current Rayale administration, those two responsibilities have been given to the Minister of Finance. The minister is not only responsible for collecting revenues but is also responsible for planning how the revenue he collects is to be spent (the budget). There is inherent conflict between those two responsibilities.

This needs to be corrected because (a) A good internal and administrative control system will encourage donor countries, already emboldened by Somaliland’s successful democratization process, to provide more financial assistance to the country. (b) Better budget will be produced and (c) Parliament will find it easier to reach budget agreement if the budget is prepared by somebody who has nothing to do with revenue collection. Today we see the minister of finance determined to ensure that his budget is passed without bothering to address the concerns expressed by members of the subcommittee.

Last year this time, the old unelected members of the Lower parliament demanded their cut in the form of wage increase as a condition of approving the budget. However, this year looking at the report given by the chairman of the subcommittee on finance, Mr. Mohamed Hagi Mohamoud, the scope of work his subcommittee has done on reviewing the budget is very impressive. They visited the sites were most revenues are collected, regions, ministries. They traced the figures in the budget, which they found out was overstated, to the personnel in the ministries. They requested for more payroll data in order to reconcile it with information in the budget.

The current review of the budget by members of Lower House is unprecedented. We have never seen before members of parliament finding major problems with a budget submitted by the Executive branch. The checks & balance in the constitution are fully operational. Parliament’s in-put should result in a budget that addresses the priorities of the people much better than last year.

Email:ahiman2@aol.com

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