By Fareeza Haniff

THE absence of a ministerial planning unit and the inadequacy of the tender board are two of the main reasons why only 50% of the 2016 national budget has thus far been spent, President David Granger has said on his weekly television programme, The Public Interest.Promising to get things right in 2017, the President assured the public they “ought not to be afraid that there has been any malpractice.”

He explained that, due to the lack of a ministerial planning unit, many ministers who took over the ministries last year were not receiving quality advice about their programmes. “We have decided to now establish ministerial planning units, so that not only plans are made, (but) expenditure which matches those plans will be programmed, so we don’t face a bottleneck,” he explained.

The President also noted that the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB) does not have the capability to process all tenders. “There is a bottleneck,” he disclosed. “There are just too many requests for that board to handle; and we need to have maybe a bigger board, or maybe the board needs to sit more frequently.”

The President said lack of planning will no longer be an excuse for permanent secretaries, given that the 2017 budget will be presented on December 05, 2016. He is optimistic that 2017 will be a better year for Guyana financially.

Finance Minister Winston Jordan recently told the Guyana Chronicle that, almost nine months into the year, less than 50 per cent of the 2016 National Budget has been spent. Describing the scenario as “unfavourable”, Jordan explained that Government’s continuous battle with existing items has hindered the smooth functioning of many agencies, but he also believes that some agencies “may have been caught off-guard with an early 2016 Budget.”

He opined that some agencies were “so accustomed to being relaxed and lackadaisical (in their approach to getting things done) that they were surprised by the early budget, and were unable to (find) their footing.”