Government departments told to “Manage, control and monitor your budgets closely”

Nine months before the end of financial year and the governments’ budget managers at treasury have sent out a list of directives, urging the departments to manage, control and monitor their budgets closely.

The directive was sent via email to all heads of ministries, departments, and all public servants.

The statement states “As the year progresses, we would like to urge and encourage departments to manage, control and monitor your budgets closely to limit spending especially for this COVID-19 period till the end of the fiscal year.

We have very limited resources given the downturn in government revenues and the economy as a whole; with a government budget deficit of $5.7mil. In addition, Government also have other competing priorities on infrastructure, machinery acquisition and maintenance.”

The list of directives instructed include the requirements for purchase orders saying that if there are no purchase orders accompanying the invoices for processing by Treasury then those invoices will be returned to the departments unpaid.

The strict directives also extend to the private sector with suppliers told to ensure that they have valid purchase order numbers and no goods should be released or services rendered without these purchase orders.

Treasury is also requiring that service agreements should be set up with local contractors is the contract is worth more than five thousand dollars.

All departments are required to provide their sponsorship policies and guidelines and expenditure summary plans to Treasury.

The directives sent via email reminded the heads of ministries and departments to “control spending and not to undermine the budget deficit”.