Earlier this month, Tanzania’s Controller and Auditor General (CAG), Mr. Ludovic Utouh, released four general financial reports on national expenditure.
Mr. Utouh represents the National Audit Office of Tanzania (NAO), and is tasked with releasing national accounting reports annually. The report released on April 12, 2011 represents expenditures for the fiscal year 2009-2010.
Some highlights from the reports include, but are not limited to, the following:
Public debt has increased by 38 per cent from 7.6 tril/-recorded in 2008/2009 to 10.5 tril/-outstanding at the end of 2009/2010. [source: Daily News]
The decision of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism to change forest fees at lower rates than the predetermined tariffs enriched in the Forest Act (CAP act 323) and Forest Regulation of 2007 without the permission of the required authority led the government to suffer an unnecessary loss of 800.9m/-. [source: Daily News]
Regarding to revenue collection, the report indicates that Tanzania mainland closed with an actual collection of 4.6tril/-against an approved estimates of 5.0 tril/ resulting into the collection of only 391bn/-. [source: Daily News]
A review of revenue management among public utilities and other bodies revealed serious weaknesses in debt collection which was a critical impediment to the smooth running of the utilities. [source: IPPmedia]
Some councils did not prepare statements of capital expenditure and financing for the period under review. In the absence of such documents, the CAG had failed to ascertain the source of funds, the names of projects, budgeted funds, balances from the previous year, actual revenue received, total funds available, actual expenditure and unapplied capital. [source: IPPmedia]
The report names the entities which improperly entered into contracts as Dodoma Urban Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (Duwasa), Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA) and the Tanzania Broadcasting Cooperation (TBC). [source: In2EastAfrica]
More than Sh69.4 million issued by the Higher Learning Students Loans Board has been swindled in Algeria, pointing to a possibility of similar forgeries elsewhere… The CAG cautioned that from now on, disbursement of loans to Tanzanian students overseas should only be done after receiving their academic progress reports to avoid forgeries. [source: The Citizen]
The value of the government investments in foreign institutions dropped from Sh140.5 billion in 2009 to Sh113.6 billion in 2010. [source: The Citizen]
National accounting reports are usually witheld from the young population of Tanzania – potentially because it is strange to see young people doing anything other than educating themselves. But seldom are such reports seen as part of our education. A few questions immedietly come to mind when perusing the reports and various follow-up highlights:
- How can these reports be better distributed?
- In what ways can this information be easily understood (other than text and numbers)?
- What can young people do next?
Full report links:
Great post. Appreciated the compliation of the media’s reportage on the CAG report. On your 2nd question, data visualisation is the answer. Twaweza (I believe) had a fantastic way of visualising the 2009 and 2010 budgets using bubbles.
We (Serengeti Advisers) spent six months organising 10,000 data points (out of almost 90,000) of Tanzanian bank performance for every quarter between January 2006 and December 2010. The result is an interactive chart on our website, inspired by Hans Rosling’s bubble motion charts. Pay us a visit, play with it and tell us what you think of it (good and bad). The underlying engine is freely available online, but needs a clever person to program your data into it. Our was done by a brilliant young Tanzanian chap.
The CAG reports are data rich and have a history. Some judicious chosing of indicators can provide a powerful way to diplay and analyse trends (e.g., the number of negative/positive mentions by local government or state corporation over time can show whether the CAG reports are being acted on or ignored!).
Would be nice to explore this further…
exremely interesting, i fear we are not rpogressing
@Aidan: Thanks! The interactive chart looks neat… is the engine also by Gapminder? I think there are a number of avenues of using the research from Serengeti Advisors; I’ll be in touch soon. Thanks again for stopping by!