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1st LD Writethru: Namibian education ministry undertakes public expenditure review

Xinhua, April 5, 2017 Adjust font size:

The Namibian Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture is undertaking a public expenditure review to ensure that the ministry has efficiency measures in place to promote funds accountability for value addition amidst budget cuts.

This was revealed by Minister Katrina Hanse-Himarwa on Wednesday at the National Assembly during her budget motivation speech.

According to Hanse-Himarwa, in spite of the negative effects of the budget cuts, the ministry fully supports the objective of fiscal consolidation as a catalyst to financial sustainability in the long run.

However, the budget cuts will negatively affect the implementation of the information communication technology (ICT) programme, especially the roll out of ICT equipment to educational institutions, she said.

"Deployment of information communication technology to schools is still a difficult process because most of the schools are not electrified in rural areas and low internet connectivity remains a challenge," she said.

The ministry' budget ceiling was reduced by 3 percent, from 12.3 billion Namibian dollars in the 2016/17 financial year, to 11.9 billion Namibian dollars (910 million U.S. dollars) in 2017/18 financial year.

As part of the review process, set to be concluded later in the year, the ministry has reduced and in some cases ceased non-productive expenditures such as travelling allowances, furniture procurement and overtime.

The recruitment process, according to Hanse-Himarwa, is also closely monitored to ensure that only critical and budgeted vacancies are filled and secondly to ensure that the wage bill that is taking 85 percent of the ministerial budget allocation is not expanded. Endit