Additional budget allocation council

The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has recommended the formation of an "Additional Budget Allocation Advisory Council" under the finance ministry. This Council would scrutinise demand for extra budgetary allocation by the various departments and ministries which has become somewhat a routine affair at the beginning of every fiscal year. We understand that such a report has been handed over to the President for his perusal.

Simple awareness raising will hardly be effective against misappropriation of funds and graft; the suggestion made by ACC is sound as putting together a specialised commission to scrutinise extra monies demanded by government bodies would allow policymakers to make a much more informed decision whether such expenditure is truly justified or not. With the ACC receiving some 13,000 allegations of graft in 2016 and the body able to conduct inquiry of a paltry 1,007 allegations, we wonder precisely how the ACC is expected to carry out this herculean task on its own.

We witness the inclusion of dozens of populist projects in every annual budget that make little economic sense and given the level of misappropriation taking place (by the ACC's own admission), a committee of this nature operating under the aegis of the finance ministry could help cut down many of these unjustified projects.

With the general tendency to expend funds allocated on many such projects in the latter half of every fiscal (where there is little oversight), the existence of such a commission would prevent the adoption of unnecessary projects to begin with and help curtail much of the problems associated with alleged graft, which is not being properly addressed presently.