As the financial year draws to a close, a question comes to mind: Why didn’t we see any of an umpteen number of projects the government announced with the new budget become reality? If we had taken a satellite photo of our cities and villages a year ago and then had a look at them again today, we would see no real differences. What about the role of mechanisms for keeping financial accounts and evaluating achievements and productivity? The millions of riyals spent — according to the system — will return to the Ministry of Finance. If the money wasn’t spent right away, it will lose some of its value because of inflation, which means a general increase in prices and a fall in the purchasing value of money. Redirecting the same amount of money to cover the expenses of a new project is time-consuming because it would need lots of paper work from the Finance Ministry.
In fact, our system of deciding how to spend the budget or choosing projects is still old-fashioned and way out-of-date. I personally don’t see any difference between the old days when we used to sell a barrel of oil for $18 and the current price of $81 per barrel. In terms of the old rates, the annual budget used to be planned in a very careful and strict way giving priority to essential and basic needs and using what economists call “budget allocations”. The Finance Ministry has now been transformed into a regulator that doesn’t spend money from the budget unless there is a mass of signatures on loads of papers.
Someone told me that processing one project between different administrations — by mail — needs so much time that it might take months. Isn’t it time that we freed the system from such bureaucracy and meaningless routine? Having a huge budget requires flexibility, which means that each ministry should have full authority to issue projects and make decisions, including financial details.
Our focus must be diverted to the safety and accuracy of spending public money inside the one administration if given the proper authority and privileges. We must find out what is hindering so many projects that have been decided upon but which were never brought to the land of reality. The citizen is the victim of liquidity and in return doesn’t enjoy the public service projects that the liquidity was intended for. Let alone the fact that liquidity in itself is a huge financial problem.
Please, take photographs of your neighborhood and keep them until next year. Compare them and tell me what differences you see!
