Finance and Public Enterprises Minister Iipumbu Shiimi said his ministry is busy engaging with other ministries over plans to only have one budget every financial year.

Shiimi disclosed this during his interaction with civil society organisations regarding the mid-term budget review, on Monday.

He said a consultation process has started in order for the government to adopt a single budget for each fiscal year.

“We are changing the process significantly because we only want to budget once. And this is what we have been telling the ministries and agencies that we have been talking to. We have started a conversation with them, and this consultation is going to continue for the next two weeks or so. We don’t want to budget twice anymore because it has become a culture that we don’t do a proper budget for the main budget,” Shiimi explained.

The minister is expecting to table the mid-term budget for 2023/24 in the National Assembly in October.

The minister believes that having two budgets in one financial year is ineffective, suggesting that the midterm should only be used for the allocation of resources.

“It is only when there are some emergencies that have cropped up in the execution of the budget that were not foreseen and are unavoidable,” Shiimi said.

He added that anything that is avoidable must be budgeted for properly at the beginning of the year.

Source: The Namibia Press Agency