National Assembly passes N$15b National Budget

THE National Assembly approved the 2006-07 National Budget on Friday after more than a month of discussion.

The Budget makes provision for more than N$15 billion in expenditure for 30 votes this financial year. The largest Budget allocations go to the Ministries of Education, Defence and Health.Servicing the country’s debt of about N$ 14,2 billion will account for 10 per cent of Government expenditure – as much as the allocations to Defence and Health.Expenditure will be just slightly less than the country’s revenue, giving Namibia for the first time since Independence a small budget surplus of N$114 million.Finance Minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila labelled this year’s Budget a “pro-poor, pro-growth” budget when she tabled it in Parliament in March.With the last of discussions on the budgetary allocations to Works, Transport and Communication, the process was concluded on Friday, with little enthusiasm left in the House to discuss the individual votes any further.Several of the votes were passed without a single comment in the last few days of last week as fatigue set in after the many late-night sittings and MPs encouraged each other not to make a lengthy process out of passing the votes.”All’s well that ends well,” said Speaker Theo Ben Gurirab before announcing a recess until June.Gurirab told MPs, particularly backbenchers, that the adjournment of the House did not mean a holiday for them, but that they should use the time to maximise outreach to their constituencies and to prepare for constructive contributions for missions abroad.”We need to make Parliament work more like a business without running away from political preferences,” said Gurirab.In his final remarks before adjourning the House, Prime Minister Nahas Angula said he was still concerned that the budgetary debate had illuminated many inconsistencies among the work of the various ministries.He appealed for consideration as to how the budget programmes could best be implemented to promote coherence and consistency for optimal impact to the people they are supposed to serve.”I’m not sure how to deal with this problem,” Angula said.In her final remarks on the budget, Kuugongelwa-Amadhila said it was clear that many Ministries could not implement all they had wanted to because of inadequate resources.However she said in her opinion Government had gone the extra mile to allocate what they could.She reminded MPs that the Government purse could only be shared in so far as there was money in it, and this meant that revenue had to be increased through economic growth.Kuugongelwa-Amadhila praised her Ministry for having increased revenue collection for the State by seven per cent over the last year, saying that in her view this was “significant.””It is important that members are aware that the ability to raise revenue is dependent on growth of the economy and interventions of high quality,” she said.Kuugongelwa-Amadhila said she was prepared to award more money to Ministries which needed it, if only the economy generated this money.She appealed to Ministries to ensure the 100 per cent implementation of their budget programmes and said that she hoped in future the Auditor General would give Government a report that was more complimentary of their efforts.Kuugongelwa-Amadhila reminded MPs that even the audit report of the National Assembly did not reflect well on the way they handled their finances.She hoped that in future the budgetary process would be concluded before the new financial year starts.The largest Budget allocations go to the Ministries of Education, Defence and Health.Servicing the country’s debt of about N$ 14,2 billion will account for 10 per cent of Government expenditure – as much as the allocations to Defence and Health.Expenditure will be just slightly less than the country’s revenue, giving Namibia for the first time since Independence a small budget surplus of N$114 million.Finance Minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila labelled this year’s Budget a “pro-poor, pro-growth” budget when she tabled it in Parliament in March.With the last of discussions on the budgetary allocations to Works, Transport and Communication, the process was concluded on Friday, with little enthusiasm left in the House to discuss the individual votes any further.Several of the votes were passed without a single comment in the last few days of last week as fatigue set in after the many late-night sittings and MPs encouraged each other not to make a lengthy process out of passing the votes.”All’s well that ends well,” said Speaker Theo Ben Gurirab before announcing a recess until June.Gurirab told MPs, particularly backbenchers, that the adjournment of the House did not mean a holiday for them, but that they should use the time to maximise outreach to their constituencies and to prepare for constructive contributions for missions abroad.”We need to make Parliament work more like a business without running away from political preferences,” said Gurirab.In his final remarks before adjourning the House, Prime Minister Nahas Angula said he was still concerned that the budgetary debate had illuminated many inconsistencies among the work of the various ministries.He appealed for consideration as to how the budget programmes could best be implemented to promote coherence and consistency for optimal impact to the people they are supposed to serve.”I’m not sure how to deal with this problem,” Angula said.In her final remarks on the budget, Kuugongelwa-Amadhila said it was clear that many Ministries could not implement all they had wanted to because of inadequate resources.However she said in her opinion Government had gone the extra mile to allocate what they could.She reminded MPs that the Government purse could only be shared in so far as there was money in it, and this meant that revenue had to be increased through economic growth.Kuugongelwa-Amadhila praised her Ministry for having increased revenue collection for the State by seven per cent over the last year, saying that in her view this was “significant.””It is important that members are aware that the ability to raise revenue is dependent on growth of the economy and interventions of high quality,” she said.Kuugongelwa-Amadhila said she was prepared to award more money to Ministries which needed it, if only the economy generated this money.She appealed to Ministries to ensure the 100 per cent implementation of their budget programmes and said that she hoped in future the Auditor General would give Government a report that was more complimentary of their efforts.Kuugongelwa-Amadhila reminded MPs that even the audit report of the National Assembly did not reflect well on the way they handled their finances.She hoped that in future the budgetary process would be concluded before the new financial year starts.