Public expenditure and revenue management is a major headache for many countries. Having and maintaining a good expenditure and revenue management system is a primary goal of many governments especially in the developing world. Kariba, like many other developing countries is faced with so many public expenditure and management problems that need to be addressed urgently as the current state of the economy is nothing to write home about. Problems such as High levels of indiscipline in resource and allocation and distribution; lack of commitment from government sectors and ministries; Poor Planning, accounting and Budgetary systems; and improper monitoring and Evaluation systems persist in Kariba’s current expenditure and revenue management system.
One major problem that is identified in Kariba’s expenditure and revenue management system is the high level of indiscipline when it comes to the allocation and distribution of resources. The allocation of resources over the past years does not reflect government’s priorities. For instance, Government’s main objective on the educational sector was to improve access and quality of primary education but in reality, the proportion of education budget devoted to primary education has declined from 52% to 40% over the past 5years. The situation is no different in the Health sector also, where spending on primary health care has declined over a third. This is a clear indication that various sectors are shying away from the government’s primary objectives. The sectors and ministries are not the only ones to be blamed on allocation of resources; Government has also reduced the share of expenditures devoted to high priority sectors such as economic and social sectors and rather increased the share of expenditure to non-productive sectors such as defence and foreign affairs.
Lack of commitment from various sectoral ministers and spending agencies is another problem with public expenditure and revenue management in Kariba. The...