AfricaPress-Tanzania: THE National Assembly has approved a 12.39trn/- budget for the Ministry of Finance and Planning, 84.5 per cent of which will be channelled to service the government debt.
Finance and Planning Minister Dr Phillip Mpango said at least 10.48trn/- of the recurrent expenditure (11.73trn/-) will be spent on debt servicing.
According to the minister, the repayments outlook of the state budget remained relatively steady having cleared debts worth 6.19trn/- as of March 2020.
Among the payments, the minister says 4.06trn/- was strategically offloaded to service the internal debt involving the interest of 1.08trn/- and capital of 2.98trn/- “About 2.13trn/- was released for the foreign debt that includes an interest rate pegged at 636.75bn/-,” he said.
Initially, the finance minister explained that until Mach 2020, a total of 24.65trn/- was generally released to finance various government activities.
He said during the same period, the ministry released 1.16trn/- for strategic projects and an additional 597.54bn/- was used to repay outstanding bills.
Dr Mpango said contractors were paid 247.5bn/-, bidders (147.73bn/-), civil servants (97.62bn/-), service providers (15.82bn/-) and 88.87bn/- for other debts.
In addition, the government announced that the ministry also paid benefits and pensions to 57,605 government pensioners, and 1,006 heirs as beneficiaries.
It also paid benefits to 457 government employees who are working on special contracts.
The ministry’s 2020/21 recurrent and development expenditure has considered all maturing debts.
Dr Mpango told the parliament that the government was working to oversee the government debt, the priority being to seek concessional loans from more generous financial institutions and channelling the funds to development projects.
He further noted that the ministry will be preparing and implementing strategies that will enable the government to borrow from the domestic and foreign exchange market without affecting the persistence of government debt, credit law, securities and Aid Chapter 134 and the risk indicators of debt securities.
In another development, Dr Mpango said the national audit office was planning to expand its audit activities for development projects to the village level.
He said the plan would also involve auditing all strategic national development projects that include the standard gauge railway, central railway line, natural gas pipeline and the extractive industry.
Nonetheless, the minister said the country’s financial intelligence unit had signed a memorandum of understanding with its counterparts’ units in DRC, Japan and Congo to strengthen illicit financial flow and money laundering controls.
So far, the anti-money laundering and illicit financial flow unit of the ministry has netted 724 dubious financial transactions between July and March 2020.
“At least 61 transactions involving false identities have been submitted to law enforcing units for legal actions,” the minister said.
