Bureaucracy threatens FG’s zero budgeting policy

Apathy among civil servants and lack of requisite knowledge may affect the proposed zero budgeting application by the Federal Government, BusinessDay investigations have shown.

Zero-Based Budgeting is a kind of budgeting in which all expenses must be justified for each new period of the financial year. This means that the budgeting is expected to start from a “zero base” and every function within the country or an organisation is analysed based on its needs and cost benefits.

Also, moves by the government to block leakages in the system which hitherto had provided extra avenues for pecks are considered as disincentives that would make some civil servants in Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to work against the success of the policy that is aligned with setting objectives before allocating resources for their implementation.

Government is said to have concluded plans to embark on the zero-sum budgeting this year which is aligned with the Management by Objective (MBO) principle or the bottom-top approach to budgeting and development.

This is at variance with the conventional budgeting procedures which generally can be characterised as ‘top-down ‘ programmers, with government reviewing what was budgeted in the previous year with the executive branch allocating what it considers appropriate for the MDAs.

But government is said to be determined to implement the policy which some analysts say is in consonance with the proposed free meals for school children programme, which was announced even before the costing.

Olusola Saraki, Senate President was optimistic that the envisaged challenges would not deter government from executing the programme.

Speaking at the recent Lagos Business School (LBS) dinner in Lagos, Saraki said,

“Zero budgeting might not be fully implemented in all the parastatals and ministries, but we can start now, we should not use that as an excuse not to start.”

Dele Adebowale, in his column on “Zero based budgeting and its consequences for 2016 budget said, “The change from traditional budgeting procedure to zero-Sum invariably requires a lot of time to impose in any organisation, especially government. Conventional budgeting procedures can generally be characterised as ‘top-down ‘ programmes, with government reviewing what was budgeted in the current year, project what the year end results will be , forcast what the gross revenue for the coming year will be, and the executive branch allocates what it considers appropriate for the MDAs.”

Adebowale further said traditional budgeting lacks details, as the civil servants responsible for it would only add up without detailed analysis of new requirements, leading to redundancies in some cases.

“The traditional budgeting method will not be able to detect the redundant staff and recommend either discharge or transfer or redeployment to other MDAs,” he added.

Friday Ameh, an energy analyst, believes that good as the policy is, government needs to embark on training and retraining of the staff of the MDAs who are used to the old ways of doing things.

“The zero budgeting approach is good and practicable, but the staff of the MDAs must be made to realise of the need to move out from their comfort zone and serve the nation. Let them think of what they can contribute towards making the change revolution possible and not what they can as usual benefit from the system.”

Ameh further observed that “For quite some decades now, it has been garbage in garbage out and the country has been worse for it.”

John Omachonu