Every time Finance Ministry officials decry the poor state of public finances and warn about the difficult decisions due to come in future budgets, many Batswana on social media ask about the progress made in tracking past spending by the previous administration (s).
And naturally so. Before being asked to tighten their belts and prepare for a bumpy fiscal ride ahead, taxpayers are asking for accounting records of their last contributions to public finance – specifically how these were used.
Starting probably from this budget and going into the medium term, taxpayers are being asked to bear with spending cuts, while bracing for increased “domestic resource mobilisation” a term that usually portends tax and levy increases.
All this will be happening in an atmosphere where the broader economy has fallen into recession and where opportunities are limited for the ordinary Motswana.
President Duma Boko foresaw the growing frustrations and, in his inaugural State of the Nation Address, pledged to attend to the situation in the first 100 days of the new administration.
“I have heard your voices. I have seen your messages. You want to know where your tax money has been spent. We will find that out and report back to you.
“We do so not to subject anyone to targeted demonisation.
“We do so to probe and examine the functional efficacy of our existing systems and institutions,” he said.
It is yet unclear what progress government has made in tracking down past spending. It is also unclear whether an independent, forensic auditor has been appointed for the task and if so, when a report could be due out. More importantly, it is not clear what period any forensic audit would cover.
Taxpayers’ frustrations are valid given that the last publicly available audit of public spending was for the year ended March 2021, nearly a full four financial years ago.
That last report, like many others, contained evidence of millions of Pula misspent, wasted, abused or under-utilised, alongside the perennial trend of poor record-keeping across government’s vast footprint, a fact that hides other losses.
From that last Auditor General’s report, take the case of a Department of Veterinary Services employee who embezzled P260,000 between 2010 and 2014. Just P31,000 was recovered from the employee and after the Tsabong Magistrates Court intervened to order the return of the funds, the employee paid just a paltry P200 in November 2020.
While cumulatively, these losses add up to a sizeable bite out of taxpayers’ funds, for many Batswana, the forensic audit needs to hunt down the “sharks,” rather than the minnows. The audit should target the big players, many of them politicians, politically-exposed or crony capitalists, who are suspected of getting away with large-scale malpractice against public spending.
In November 2021, an Auditor General’s report into COVID-19 procurement and spending, found that millions of pula went wasted, unaccounted for or abused, with inexperienced companies grabbing tenders at inflated prices but failing to deliver.
The 116-page audit report painted a picture of poor preparation as well as routine, but repeated financial abuses costing millions of Pula to taxpayers.
The Auditor General’s report stopped shy of mentioning the beneficiaries of the irregular activities and quite significantly, the audit did not deal with the deal with alleged procurement abuses in the P431 million food basket programme, specific details on the pricing of direct procurement tenders and alleged improper award of COVID-19 related supply contracts.
The audit also did not cover the nine-month wage subsidy programme under the COVID relief measures, where government paid more than P1 billion to help companies retain workers. Despite overwhelming reports of companies and individuals defrauding government, as well pledges by the Finance Ministry to conduct a thorough audit, by March 2021, authorities had only recovered P20 million from delinquents.
In January 2022, The Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime told Mmegi that it had received 75 reports alleging corruption in COVID-19 procurement and investigations were ongoing.
To date, available records suggest that no cases have successfully been prosecuted, least of all those involving major procurement amounts.
However, in the years since the pandemic, anecdotal evidence suggests that public finances were kind to some. The Africa Wealth Report released in 2021 estimated that 200 more people had become US dollar millionaires in Botswana during 2020, a year in which ordinary citizens struggled against the COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on livelihoods.
Boko’s administration carries the weight of restoring the trust deficit that has widened between taxpayers and government in the past years.
In the twilight years of the Masisi administration, many government announcements of initiatives, programmes and projects were met with cynicism and often brazen contempt by Batswana on social media. Many commented that the spending was for the “connected” only existed on paper or would be swallowed up by corruption, all signs of a growing trust deficit.
As explained by former BURS acting commissioner, payment of taxes is a “social contract” between the State and its citizens, where money is paid for services and development.
Lekau previously told Mmegi that all over the world, citizens were questioning the wisdom of paying taxes when governments were not living up to their side of the contract.
“In developed countries, some citizens are saying they won’t pay because there’s no return on their investment and that’s a political issue,” he said.
As tighter budgets loom, the urgency of a forensic audit also grows.
In conducting a quick benchmark, Boko can use the example of Malaysia, where after the 2018 general elections, the newly elected government initiated a forensic audit into 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), a state investment fund embroiled in a $4.5 billion corruption scandal.
Or he could look closer to home, like in Malawi where in 2013, following revelations of widespread embezzlement in what became known as the "Cashgate" scandal, the government there commissioned a forensic audit to investigate the misappropriation of funds within its civil service. The findings prompted numerous arrests and reforms in financial oversight.
In Liberia last year, the government suspended its central bank governor following an audit that uncovered irregular loans and unauthorised spending. The audit, covering the period from 2018 to 2023, revealed over $80 million in unauthorised financing for government salary payments, leading to increased scrutiny and calls for accountability.
For Boko, these actions would be in line with his pledges at SONA.
“You want to know that your money is being used to better the lives of all Batswana, not just a few.
“We will publish a comprehensive review of public finances to identify waste, corruption, and inefficiencies, followed by a plan for corrective actions,” he said.
