Opposition member of Parliament Premila Kumar has demanded that Finance Minister Professor Biman Prasad provide a full breakdown of all overspending by government agencies and projects, along with valid reasons for the expenditures.
Her comments come as Government announced a redeployment of funds within the 2023/2024 National Budget to cover $7.9million overspent by the Ministry of Education and the Fiji Police Force.
However, Prof Prasad has said the overall expenditure for FY2023/2024 was well within the total appropriation approved by Parliament. He said the actual expenditure stood at around $4.1billion, below the budgeted sum of $4.3billion.
Mrs Kumar said this underscored a glaring failure in financial management and brought Government’s claim of accountability and transparency under “serious scrutiny”.
“While such redeployments are technically permissible under the Financial Management Act, they expose deeper issues such as the government’s poor planning, inadequate budget allocations, and poor expenditure control,” she said.
“The public deserves to know how these overspends occur and what measures, if any, are in place to prevent government agencies from exceeding their budgets. This situation reflects a weak monitoring function within the government.”
She said the current situation pointed to poor budget planning and a lack of effective expenditure control by the heads of government agencies, and the people of Fiji deserved better financial management and greater accountability.
Prof Prasad said there was no overspending at whole of Government level as Mrs Kumar portrayed.
“In fact, the overall actual net deficit is around 3.3 per cent for last FY, lower than 4.8 per cent as budgeted,” he said.
“This is underpinned by the strong tax collections and Government meeting the tax revenue forecast.
“Virements and redeployment have always been a feature of our budget system and provides the operational for flexibility for budget execution, but within a proper legal framework to ensure proper management, including Cabinet approval for redeployment of funding.”
Prof Prasad explained the recent redeployment exercise of was undertaken to meet the funding shortfall as both agencies provided critical services.
He said the funding shortfall of $1.8million for the Ministry of Education was to cater for the cost of salaries and allowances for teachers in ECE, primary and secondary schools.
“Similarly, the Fiji Police Force had encountered a funding shortfall of $6.1m to meet the salary cost for our Police officers and payment of allowances.
“The Coalition Government has been very transparent with its decision making, including public announcement on all Cabinet decisions. Honourable Premila needs to understand that the previous Government never provided any details on redeployments or any other Cabinet decision.
“Her wild assertion poor financial management reeks of hypocrisy. She should just be honest and reflect on the disaster that happened during the term of the government that she was part of.”
