Despite giving ACB a 55 percent increase in allocation, beating key sectors of health and education, observers feel the gesture would be meaningless if erratic disbursement of funding to governance and law enforcement agencies persists.

As if to buttress the Tonse Alliance promise to fight corruption and enhance good governance, in his K2.840 trillion budget presented on Friday, Finance Minister Sosten Gwengwe made the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) among key gainers with a K6.3 billion allocation in the 2022/23 national budget.

The ACB allocation is among the largest increases in the budget which saw allocation to key sectors such as agriculture increased by 57.41 percent to K447 billion from K284 billion with education sector allocation increasing by 41.2 percent at K462.2 billion from K327.3 billion while the health budget increased by 34 percent at K283.5 billion from K187.2 billion.

But observers say the move would be futile if government continues the trend of hoarding funding to governance and law enforcement agencies, something that characterised the 2021/22 financial year which almost paralysed their operations.

Trapence: Funds still inadequate

In the last financial year designed to last for nine months as opposed to the traditional 12 months, ACB was handed K4.07 billion while in the 2020/21 budget which ran for the full year it got K5.2 billion.

However, despite the funding increase, the Ministry of Finance acknowledges that a significant amount might not be directly channelled towards the corruption fight.

It writes in the 2022/23 Draft Estimates of Expenditure and Recurrent and Capital Budget: “[ACB has] old and tired fleet which has proven to be costly to maintain; the Anti-Corruption Bureau is operating from rented office premises and pays for rentals from allocated budget which takes up a substantial share of its budget.”

The  Malawi Human Rights Commission’s (MHRC),  an independent national human rights institution established by the Constitution, had its budget jumping from K1.055 billion in the 2021/22 fiscal plan to K1.375 billion.  In the 2020/2021 national budget, government allocated K1.064 billion to the commission.

The office of the Ombudsman, which has in the past few years gained public trust for exposing the dirt in public institutions, has been allocated slightly above K1.254 billion.

In the 2021/22 plan it got K867.28 million while in the 2020/2021 national cake it got around K1.120 billion, records show.

The Legal Aid Bureau which provides legal services to people who cannot afford private lawyers, has seen its allocation rise from K1.448 billion in the prevailing budget to around K1.809 billion in the 2022/23 plan.

As for the Office of the Director of Public Declarations, the budget estimates for the upcoming financial year are nailed at K1.026 billion from K742 million in the previous financial year.

The Judiciary has been allocated about K14.450 billion but in the 2021/22 setup it got about K9.899 billion.

Human Rights Defenders Coalition (HRDC) national chairperson Gift Trapence yesterday observed that budgetary allocations to governance institutions were inadequate for them to execute their mandates.

He said: “HRDC has noted with concern the budget allocations for the governance and justice institutions. The allocations are still on the lower side to allow the governance and justice institutions to fully execute their mandates of serving Malawians.

 “These institutions’ operations have always been suffocated due to inadequate funding. HRDC is, therefore, calling upon Parliament to increase further the allocations to these critical institutions. The previous budgets to these institutions were only for nine months as such we cannot treat the current budgetary allocations as an increase.”

Centre for Social Accountability and Transparency (Csat) executive director Willy Kambwandira said much as they appreciate the funding increase, they have asked the government to stop hoarding the funds allocated to the governance institutions.

 “We saw government recently failing to release funds for ACB which was duly approved in Parliament based on lame excuses such as payment system failure. Such conduct suffocates efforts to promote the rule of the law. We want to see changes,” said Kambwandira.

Ombudsman spokesperson Arthur Semba said the budget allocation is way below their expected expenditure.

“The operations budget, ORT [other recurrent transaction], has been increased by K165 205 392, from K495 616 176 in 2021/22 to K660 821 568 representing 33 %.

“However, if we factor in the fact that implementation period has also increased by 33% from 9months to 12 months, there is no ORT increase and in fact the 2022-23 ORT is less than 2021-22 ORT budget (by at least 10% in terms of real value of money) if inflation is factored in the analysis.

“The 79% of the indicative ORT ceiling of 2022-23 will cover all administrative related costs and contract obligations. Thus, only 21% (around K132 million) will be used for pure operational activities and the amount is inadequate.

“The office requires a minimum of K850 Million (ORT) of which MK327million should be for pure operational activities to discharge its mandate effectively,” he said.

But Minister of Information and Digitisation Gospel Kazako said the increase in funding is a sign of the government’s commitment towards the fight against corruption.

“This funding is a loud whistle that we are not walking the comedy route in uprooting evil. Rule of law is one of the pillars in the Chakwera High Five. Those institutions enforcing the rule of law need adequate to achieve the objective. High on the agenda is the fight against corruption and theft of public resources,” he said in a response to a questionnaire yesterday

ACB has been facing erratic funding which was attributed to the challenges with the Integrated Financial Management Information System, something that led to the bureau to fail to process payments for some of its operations on time.

A source told our sister paper that some officers were at one time forced to meet their own food, fuel and accommodation costs for field trips at the time they were having a huge case load.

But the Ministry of Finance spokesperson told our sister paper The Nation that ACB funding delays were largely due to some end users’ lack of capacity to use Ifmis.

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