• Finances
• Geral

ShareThis

Average rating

 

 

 

 

 

(0 votes)

Rate this: ---Excellent!Great!GoodQuite goodNot so great

• Clique Iniciar Sessão para colocar comentários

On the second day of the Mobilising Social Justice Conference, Frankie Jenkins presented the outcomes of his study on the budget processes in the South African parliament. He also talked about the role of civil interventions in enhancing accountability of parliament. He argued that the right to participate is entrenched in the Constitution and an obligation on both Houses of Parliament to facilitate meaningful public participation. He said that measures must be in place to ensure that participation takes place and people must have the capacity to participate.

Budget process
Procedures for preparing budgets are set up in the legislation - Money Bills Amendment Procedure and Related Matters Act. Each year all the processes have to be followed.

Civic  interventions can take place through the following areas:
•    Budgetary review
•    Fiscal framework and revenue proposals
•    Division of revenue Bill
•    Appropriation Bil
•    Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS)
•    Revenue Bills
•    Adjustments budgets

Jenkins argues that there have been a significant number of submissions to the Portfolio Comittee on Finance. The majority of these have been from industry players, big business and professional associations. NGOs and CBOs have not made significant input an have made very few submissions.
Participation in the Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) process is also limited.

Sharuk Alam from The Patna Collective in India told the meeting that public participation has not been realised by the Indian legislation except for access to information Act. Alam noted that Jenkin’s presentation is a detailed account of process and procedure but it does not talk about how NGOs should prioritise policy.

She shared experiences from India on how limited public participation is in government processes and how the courts hae been used to address some challenges. The state does not give the public opportunities to share their views on policy related issues.

She concluded by saying that, different centres of power are formed and there is a need for participation in all forms and levels e.g. how communities negotiate with big funding agencies.

Lucy Jamieson of the  Children's Instituteat the University of Cape Town noted that Jenkin’s paper lacks a ciritical analysis. She noted that there is a need to be critical on the support given by parliament to parliamentarians to engage in processes. This aught to be the same for civil society.

The budget processes make it difficult for civil society to participate. The processes are too technical and complex, time frame given to make input and submissions is very limited. Budget input needs technical experties and many civil society organisations do not have the capacity, she said.
Jamieson further noted that even though in some instances there is interaction with specific government departments, there is no transparency on how decisions are made by treasury. This is also exacebated by the fact that there are unequal relationships between departments when they are making budget bids to treasury.

She concluded by saying that civil society actors do not speak in one voice and do not share information and resources. There is a need to demystify the budget, she said. There is an assumption that civil society will be able to capacitate itself - this is costly and takes tim. Something must be done to strengthen knowledge and skills.

All speakers agreed that there is aneed to understand what the purpose of participationis.
NGOs need to build capacity within themselves to participate in these processes. They must also be able to contextualise issues in relation to their work - this makes it easier to respond.