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Zambian Civil Societies Recommend Regular Monitoring of Government Projects

Credit: Civil Society Organization (CSO) Debt Alliance

By Magdalene Kahiu

Lusaka, 24 December, 2022 / 9:00 pm (ACI Africa).

Officials of the Civil Society Organization (CSO) Debt Alliance and the Zambia Tax Platform have recommended regular evaluation of government projects in the Southern African nation.

The recommendation from organizations, which include the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection (JCTR) follows the release of the 2021 Auditor General's report that highlights the expenditure and revenue performance of Ministries, Provinces, and Spending Agencies for 2021.

In an October 6 report, Zambia’s Auditor General said resources are lost through wasteful expenditure, failure to follow procurement procedures, undelivered materials, non-recovery of loans and advances and unaccounted-for outlays.

“There is a need to strengthen regular monitoring and evaluation mechanisms for all government projects especially those funded using borrowed money and to ensure that no deviations from contractual agreements go unpunished,” officials of the civil societies say in a Wednesday, November 2 statement.

They add that information regarding projects funded through loans and grants should “explicitly be disaggregated.”

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They say that Law Enforcement Agencies ought to be supported and empowered to “enforce the law on all perpetrators of resource mismanagement and all those linked to cases as cited in the report.”

Officials of the civil societies further say there is need for investigative agencies “to institute follow-ups on reported cases to ensure that perpetrators are prosecuted, and would-be offenders are deterred.”

In the report that looked at the 2021 fiscal year, Zambia’s Auditor General outlined the most dominating channels for the loss of resources in the last three years.

The comptroller general also said that administrative inadequacies are a key medium through which resources were unrealized, lost, or misappropriated.

The October 6 report further outlines irregularities in the management of public resources, misappropriation of collected revenues and failure to collect prescribed fees as key drivers of resource leakages.

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For the Zambia Revenue Authority (ZRA), the Auditor General report says while the institution has consistently achieved its revenue targets, the total revenues collected have been consistently falling short of planned expenditure and therefore, yielding sustained fiscal deficits.

In the November 2 statement, the civil society officials also say that interventions “towards the need to widen the tax base should be preceded by measures to enhance internal controls within ministries to improve their abilities to collect what is already available.”

This story was first published by ACI Africa on 14 November 2022.

Magdalene Kahiu

Magdalene Kahiu is a Kenyan journalist with passion in Church communication. She holds a Degree in Social Communications from the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA). Currently, she works as a journalist for ACI Africa.

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