Africa-Press – Tanzania. FINANCE and Planning Minister, Dr Mwigulu Nchemba has directed the Treasury Registrar to evaluate the performance and efficiency of public institutions and companies and come up with recommendations, including merging some and establishing new ones, if necessary.
“This will help the government remain with public companies or institutions that would bring benefits instead of burden to the government,” Dr Nchemba stated.
He further affirmed that the government will not bear seeing public companies and agencies fail to submit their accounts to the Controller and Auditor General (CAG) this year.
Dr Mwigulu issued the directive yesterday when opened training on performance agreements for the office of the Treasury Registrar and board of directors for different public organisations and government agencies.
In a statement read by the ministry’s Deputy Permanent Secretary, Dr Khatibu Kazungu, Dr Nchemba said the government has invested over 65tri/- in 237 public institutions and companies for the aim of offering various social and economic services so that they contribute more to the national income.
Dr Nchemba said one of the weaknesses on the part of the institutions and companies was failure or delay in submitting their accounts to the CAG for auditing.
He ordered the government’s entities to ensure that they make spending as per the guidelines and rules of the 2021/22 budget when implementing their budgets.
Also, the public institutions that collect part of revenues on their own should reduce dependence on the government.
“Still, there are many institutions that even funds for their recurrent budgets depend on the government.
I remind you that exploit opportunities you have for increasing your revenues collection. You must change and get rid of business as usual,” Dr Mwigulu insisted.
He went on telling the institutions to have strong plans of building capacity among workers serving the internal audit departments in order to make them have better understanding over all responsibilities of their institutions and various systems used in undertaking their work.
The minister said he expected to see those issues are being worked on by all institutions and weaknesses are addressed once and for all, and directed that from 2022/23 reports on assessment on performance of public institutions be kept open to show institutions that have performed well as well as the least performing entity.
Earlier, Treasury Registrar Athumani Mbuttuka said the training involved a total of 711 participants from the institutions, companies and 237 government agencies which operate under the TR office.
Mr Mbuttuka noted that during the 2020/21 fiscal year his office has signed performance contracts with 230 public institutions and companies, equivalent to 97 per cent of the total number of 237 entities that are required by the law to do so.
