‘MERGING GOVT UNITS COULD SAVE MILLIONS’

MBABANE – Will cutting the 10 per cent from ministries help while government is still bloated with duplication of departments?

Social commentators have in recent years articulated the duplication of responsibilities within government, citing that it consumed large amounts that could be redirected to priority areas.

An economist, who gave this interview under anonymity, said it was prudent that government merged a number of departments under certain ministries to minimise the expenditure incurred by the State.

He said it was redundant to minimise the budget of each ministry by 10 per cent while the resources available were not adequately used. This, the economist said, would be counter the intended economic recovery.

Discipline

In exercising fiscal discipline, the scholar proposed that the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Economic Planning and Development and that of Commerce, Industry and Trade should combine some of their departments.

“Efficiencies are bridged and this results in the same number of offices in different ministries. The major problem this creates is that it increases government expenditure against investment in the economy,” he said.

The scholar further said these duplicated ministries needed to be looked at seriously and be revamped. The economist further said the main people to function must be the technocrats because the political heads change.

The economist opined that government should copy what the private sector was doing in terms of addressing high productivity and by so doing, it would minimise the high wage bill. He further cited that the duplication of responsibilities meant that a lot of human resource was remunerated for executing the same duties. “They use large volume of stationery, need resources like fuel and transport to do the same thing while it could be combined into one department that shall be accountable to a single supervisor.

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