IDB report on public financial management
Kaieteur News – Guyanese have been talking about it and living under its dark shadow for the past three decades. We in this paper have been presenting it in successive reports almost daily for more than 20 years. This is what the newest IDB report documents about the state of public finances management in this country. To reuse the word used by the IDB, it is still “inadequate” (KN Mach 30).
The IDB report identified a number of areas where urgent action is needed to repair the cuts, close the gaps, through which misinformed Guyanese have repeatedly driven a large bus. There have been some improvements, in keeping with the requirements of the Financial Management and Accountability Act 2003. That’s one piece of good news, with the regulation of internal audit, and “ICT upgrades and capacity building” others that “built sustainability and improved. transparency in Guyana’s public institutions ”(KN March 30). Yet there are so many more that are still scarce, requiring high-level attention and action. The flaws and negatives are numerous and material, and we only restate them.
According to the IDB report, Guyana is “well below the regional average” (2.0 versus 2.9) on the professional development index (PRODEV) “on public financial management.” The report identified “weaknesses across the following key areas: transparency in intergovernmental fiscal relations, including a lack of information about resources received from delivery units; asset and liability management ”and“ insufficient legislative scrutiny of external audit reports, non-competitive procurement… and procurement inefficiency, with a lack of feasibility studies and rigorous project evaluations ”among other damning disclosures.
In this paper we have to pose this question: what are we really doing at the highest levels in the vital area of public finance management? Let’s ask another: what leaders can be so rude, so ignorant, so unscrupulous, that they stand under the supervision (or lack thereof) of such faults that literally invite the rogue among us to ‘ w maximized exploitation? When we absorb the gravity of the IDB report, we can appreciate that our public finances management standards and way of life opens up taxpayers and public treasury to be robbed at will. And as we know it well, this is what has happened under successive governments, with government officials themselves leading the way in ripping the people. Those gaps, no matter how charitable they look, encourage everyone to celebrate Christmas daily.
In fairness, some small steps have been taken, for which some recognition is due. However, when reviewing the size of our public finance management deficits, it is clear that we have only touched on the first letter in the alphabet. But even as we do so, we are turning right and undermining when our enhanced audit regulations are not comprehensively and consistently visited with parliamentary oversight, how people’s business, and people’s money people, is maintained. At present, this dilemma is over the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee on the fitness and propriety of its chair to be in that position. While things like these are happening, oversight of public finances is weakening.
Furthermore, when there is ongoing uncertainty about “resources received from distribution units” then the start needed to hold those units accountable falls apart at the seams. This is why the usual skulls are so rampant where taxpayers’ money is involved. Even further, when there is a “lack of feasibility studies and rigorous project evaluations” then all we are doing is allocating and spending money with a mask. Our leaders and professionals are no different from drunken sailors on shore holidays, who splash out without thinking of costs to the paying public or long-term consequences for the nation.
We encourage our readers to think about this: no responsible government that says it is concerned with prudent stewardship of the assets and resources entrusted to it, the trust placed in its hands, can act as this. But here’s what we’ve had for the longest while now. With all those billions being borrowed, and with the control of public finances in the state it is, this is a program for the perpetuation of the fraud that has set this nation so low. If we don’t have the clearest idea on the front end of what’s going on (“resources received from distribution units”) and compound that with poor procurement practices (“non-competitive” and with “inefficiency”) and close out with less than an overview perceptive, ethical and vigilance and approval (“lack of… rigorous project evaluations”), then there is no way that our watchdogs and those who give positions of responsibility can give the nation an honest and accurate accounting of how it is doing their spending of money, and how the related debt obligations that they must honor have been used to the fullness of their intended purposes.
Guyanese have been arguing about who stole before, and who stole more. The IDB’s report on managing public finances does not spare anything, condemns it all. We are lost, but pretend we are not and we know where we are going and what we are doing. Whatever kind is considered, that confirms how wicked we are.