By BUUMBA CHIMBULU
GOVERNMENT should conduct capacity development workshops for Members of Parliaments on how to interpret the national budget numbers to minimise unfounded speculation and avoid misinformation, an expert has said.
This can be done by the Ministry of Finance and National Planning, as well as the Parliamentary Budget Office, according to an Economic Statistician and Fiscal Analyst, Shebo Nalishebo.
Mr Nalishebo said it was unfortunate that some Members of Parliament had limited knowledge on the difference between the budget speech and yellow book.
He said this in his write-up on the “Inconsistencies’ in the 2022 Budget.”
“Soon after the Budget Speech, when some Patriotic Front parliamentarians pointed out that the numbers in the 2022 Budget Speech were not balancing, I thought they were merely politicking.
“This is because the format of the Budget Speech presented by the Minister of Finance and National Planning was no different from that presented by his predecessors, including during the time that the Patriotic Front was in power. To therefore suggest that the numbers did not add up was downright mischievous,” he said.
Mr Nalishebo emphasised that it was important to distinguish between what was presented in the yellow book and the numbers presented in the 2022 national Budget Speech.
First, he explained, unlike the budget speech, which was essentially a summary of the Budget, the Yellow Book provided the detailed estimates of revenue and expenditure presented based on conventional government accounts, and the two documents were consistent.
“But with the latest comments coming from the a Member of Parliament, it has dawned on me that it is not mere politicking, but genuine limited knowledge (I almost said ignorance) of how the budget is presented, even by people who previously served in senior government portfolios who should know better.
“Perhaps the confusion is because the Ministry of Finance and National Planning executes some expenditures centrally on behalf of the ministries or sectors,” Mr Nalishebo said.
He explained that while the Yellow Book reflected the organisational structures of government, the Budget Speech numbers were based on the Classification of Functions of Government (COFOG), or simply functional classification.
According to Mr Nalishebo, the COFOG was an international classification that showed the purpose for which outlays were undertaken.
“The beauty of this is that COFOG permits trends in government expenditure on particular functions or policy purposes to be examined over time. With the changes made to ministries and departments since the UPND came to power, it will not usually be possible to use conventional government accounts to compare expenditure on these purposes over time.
“But with functional classification, we can compare education expenditure during the reign of the Patriotic Front to that of the UPND and gauge the policy direction,” Mr Nalishebo said.
