Popular Democratic Movement (PDM) leader McHenry Venaani has called on the Ministry of Finance and Public Enterprises to be stringent and strict on the budget allocated to ministries and how they spend it.
Speaking to Nampa on the side-lines of the tabling of the 2023/24 national budget by Finance Minister Iipumbu Shiimi on Wednesday, Venaani said some ministries receive a large chunk of the government’s budget but do not necessarily produce results reflecting the amount allocated to them.
Some of these ministries according to Venaani are Education, Arts and Culture and Health and Social Services. He said it is not necessarily a bad thing that most of the budget goes to these sectors, however, it does not necessarily translate to expected outcomes.
“The Ministry of Education ought to make a summative case to say since they are getting more money, does it mean that we spend more money on education but have a passing rate that is going to improve? Imagine, we are spending 28 per cent of our national budget on education and we have a less than 31 per cent passing rate in the country,” he noted.
The education ministry got an N.dollars 16.8 billion budget allocation for the 2023/24 Financial Year and N.dollars 51.2 billion over the Midterm Expenditure Framework (MTEF).
Shiimi in his budget speech stressed that the government needs to get more value for every dollar spent on education as currently, education outcomes and returns on these investments over time are not commensurate with expectations.
He noted that the education sector continues to absorb a growing share of the national purse and of the total expenditure this year, 28.4 per cent is earmarked for the education sector.
More than N.dollars 200 million of this amount is budgeted to recruit additional teachers to ensure the adequacy of teacher-to-learner ratios in classrooms.
More than N.dollars 570 million has been availed in the development budget to cater for the construction and renovation of classrooms and other educational infrastructure such as hostels and offices.
Source: The Namibian Press Agency
