Musa, I find your commentary valuable and I identify with your yearning for value in reading a document which should have borne enough significance to require mass-readership. I also read Katim's rendition of the "Budget's" significance. I appreciate the time taken to read the budget and Katim's plea notwithstanding, my vocabulary, sentence structure, and actuarial acumen may suffer if I read the budget story. So I will still stick to reading the readers' notes.

 

I agree that a National budget must be much more than the engagement in prose, poetry, and soliloquy. My understanding of a Budget is the presentation of the Gambian condition to date and a request for either the same amount of funding, increased funding, or less funding although that is rarely the case, for the maintenance of a satisfactory condition or improvement thereto. So Budgets take stock of what has transpired and from that experience, a new request is made to the treasury for re-funding of on-going or old projects and desired new development. In this exercise lies the time value of money. That is the reason for presenting the statistics on Gambia's debt, its financing, the value of the Dalasi/Dalasy, and the state of public wealth. So unless one knows what is being done with the previous budget request which not only includes maintenance of constructed roads, water treatment and distribution, sewerage, electricity and energy, capacity enhancement, Riverine and coastal erosion, fish ecology and population enhancements, commodity price concerns, employment and compensation of the citizenry, Agricultural productivity and marketing etc but also accounting for foreign AID and debt servicing, The presenter may not come before us to expend our valuable time just for the nostalgia of the annual ritual as Katim would loathe to writhe in.

 

Under proper circumstances Katim, I would relish in the presentation of a national budget. For now, I'll tend my goats and roast my groundnuts for I cannot market take promisory notes (also written on rice paper from ROC) for my harvest.

 

Musa, your yearning for municipal accounting and budgets is well placed and appreciated. The National budget should really be a compilation of budgets from her constituent municipalities. For instance, The budget of Senegal includes the budgets of the arrondissements etc. It recognises and commends work completed under those municipalities and justifies their request for continued and new funding. It incorporates structural and capacity needs of the municipalities into a national vision. This exercise enables Senegal to ascertain how much debt to incur and to shop around the globe for more favorable debt-interest and servicing terms and not just take any loan from just any institution because she needs funds. The actual process of taking a loan must be a sobering and exhaustive process and one of a last resort nature. If Senegal's example is not comfortable because Gambia considers herself a natural rival to Senegal (talk about cutting your head to spite your face) then perhaps Japan's budget or good-old England's budget will provide some clues. Or possibly Taiwan's since folk seem to think that all that glitters is indeed gold. It will be interesting if someone could foreward us Taiwan's national budget. You'll begin to see why our 2002 budget is not worth a hill of beans. Gambia's small size and geology affords her extraordinary opportunities to be the model nation, the envy of others, but all that natural goodwill and more are squandered and mortgaged in the quest to cover lies, corruption, murder, and outright thievery. For God's sake even procurement of capital ware and other equipment is preceded by considerations of how much the procurer can either get in the form of kickbacks or "inadvertent" price errors.

 

As you said Musa, if municipalities collect any taxes, tarrifs, tolls, etc. it should be natural to expect a tally of those funds, how they were expended, and what lessons are learnt from expenditure to expenditure. What I want to know is how you figure out how much tax or tarrif you would levy on your citizens if you have no clue what to use those taxes for. It is sort of like following a tradition of collecting taxes from colonial days for tradition's sake as Katim implores us to read the budget for nostalgia's sake. Katim, you did have some valid points in your piece and I acknowledge those. So don't start hooting and hollering about me picking a fight with you. Sankung says hello by the way. We have a mutual friend in him. Send me private mail and I'll give you detail in case you wonder who.

 

Haruna.