By Ramatou Jawo
Honourable Seedy Keita, the Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs, addressed the issue of delayed funds disbursement to the ministries during a session of the Assembly on Wednesday, 6th March 2024.
He was responding to a question from the National Assembly Member for Foni Bintang Karanai, who asked him to inform the August Assembly of the ministry’s plan to solve the problem, especially for the operational costs of the ministries.
Minister Keita explained that the ministry operates on a cash budget, with allocations contingent upon resource availability.
“Cash releases are made during the first week of the month to their Ministries Departments and Agencies and the amount allocated to them is based on the cash available,” the minister said.
In a follow-up question, the member for Foni Bintang constituency highlighted discrepancies between budget estimates and actual funds available, querying why ministries often face funding shortages despite budget approval.
Minister Keita clarified that while budgets serve as plans, their approval doesn’t guarantee immediate funding availability.
“It depends on how much money is collected and how much money we can pay out and what the budget approves is the plan of revenue plan of expenditure, but that does not mean that those expenditures or the revenues are backed by money that can be spent if we have a situation whereby our revenue projections are coming forth as expected definitely we will not even do cash allocation every entity would be able to spend their budget as was approved,” he said.
In response to a supplementary question from Honourable Alfusainey Ceesay of the Sami constituency regarding the prioritization of ministries’ needs, Minister Keita affirmed that sectors such as health, education, and infrastructure are given precedence alongside governmental exigencies.
“I think definitely priorities are there and the priority sectors are health, education, and infrastructure and other exigencies of the government,” the minister said.
Addressing a question from Hon. Lamin Ceesay of Kiang West constituency about ministries’ timing for implementing programs based on their budget allocations, Minister Keita emphasized that budget allocations are contingent upon available cash flow. He noted limitations on borrowing due to high debt levels and borrowing ceilings.
“You have a cash flow that goes with that. And our allocation cannot be based on what is in the budget. If the cash is not there to support it, the logical support point will be, why don’t you borrow, but we have a borrowing ceiling. As we all know, our debt level is very elevated.
“So our allocation decision takes into account three variables. The variables are the cash inflow collected for the month, the expenditure required, and how much we can borrow to support allocation to the sectors. In a typical month, we allocate more to the sectors than the cash available by adding to the borrowing, but the borrowing amount cannot exceed the ceiling set.” he concluded.