BoT must clear the mess

During the visit the president put on hold payments amounting to over Sh900 billion that had already been cleared for payment by Ministry of Finance and Planning officials until thorough verification has been done.

According to available information, the huge debt had accrued from services and supplies supplied by firms and individuals to the government outside the allocated budget.

In addition, the president ordered the Ministry of Finance and Planning to move the External Debt department back to the central bank.

The department was moved to the ministry about two or three years ago for reasons best known to the ministry officials.

The primary function of this department is to monitor and keep all records related to borrowing made by the government and the payments made.

But, something which featured prominently during the president’s visit, and which he promptly unveiled, is the existence of employees on the BoT staff list who apparently do not deserve to be on the bank’s payroll.

For the sake of our argument, we shall pick only two issues: verification of the debt and putting BoT’s bloated payroll list in order.

For about two decades now the central bank has found itself in the middle of financial scandals, some of which could have been avoided entirely had there been due diligence among the bank’s staff and thus saved billions of shillings in taxpayers’ money which ended up in individuals’ pockets.

Those with fresh memory will remember that in 2006 it came to light that over Sh133 billion had been siphoned from the central bank’s External Payments Arrears (EPA) account by individuals after they had forged debt-swapping documents.

We believe that had verification of the debts and documents been properly done the huge amount of money would not have been dished out.

In 2008 a scandal emerged whereby politicians and businesspeople siphoned over Sh200 billion from the central bank after they claimed to have imported goods under the Commodity Import Support (CIS) scheme.

More recently, over Sh300 billion was withdrawn from the Tegeta Escrow Account at the central bank and paid to a controversial individual who dubiously claimed to have wholly bought the IPTL power generating company.

We have given the above examples just to show how grossly negligent the government has been when it comes to debt verification.

President Magufuli on Thursday noted this problem and categorically pointed out that he would not allow such mess to occur on his watch.
We fully support him.

With regard to the BoT staff list, there is most likely a problem. We dare make this speculation because rumours have been swirling around for years accusing the central bank of employing workers without due regard to merit.

Of course, we don’t have watertight evidence to prove this, but what President Magufuli said on Thursday sheds light on this matter because he had the evidence in hand.

BoT is the central nerve of the country’s economy, meaning that we expect it to put stringent measures in recruiting its staff. It was supposed to serve as an example to be emulated by other government institutions. This mess must be cleared immediately because, without mincing words, it is utterly disgusting!