By Gary Hatigeva
THE Public Accounts Committee (PAC) will this morning, begin to hear from the number of Ministries that were allocated funds under the 2017 Supplementary Appropriation Bill.
Submitted as the 2017 Supplementary Appropriation Bill 2018, the Committee is expected to use two days, to inquire into how these ministries have used their allocations and what have come out of them, as far as policy achievement is concerned.
The Ministries scheduled to appear in today’s hearing are, the Ministry of Finance and Treasury, the Office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development, and the Ministry of Environment, Climate Change and Disaster Management.
The others include the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and External Trade, the Ministry of Health and Medical Services, and the Ministry of Justice and Legal Affair & National Judiciary, which are expected to appear before the committee tomorrow.
There were two Supplementary Appropriation Bills for 2017, one was presented under the leadership of Snyder Rini as former Finance Minister, seeking a total of over $400 million, and the other was submitted under Manasseh Sogavare who is the current Minister of Finance and Treasury, asking for only a total of $43,906,376.
Both supplementary appropriations according to their objectives, were identical in explanatory notes, which were to supplement additional expenditure and expenditure already authorised by the Minister of Finance and Treasury under provisions in the 2017 Appropriation Act 2016.
That is through contingency warrants and advance warrants, and both were also for the service of the year ending 31 December2017, and many of these services and implementation programmes were also carried forward into the 2018 Budget.
This year, a total of $226 million was approved for a number of ministries that were forced to seek supplementary allocations, after their estimates in the 2018 budget were slashed.
The hearing into the 2017 Supplementary Appropriation Bill 2018 according to Parliamentary Schedule, starts at 9:30am this morning and ends tomorrow.
