Abel vows to strike 40pc mark in functional grants

DEPUTY Prime Minister and Treasurer Charles Abel says functional grants for provinces will reach the 40 per cent mark by next week.
He explained this to Oro Governor Gary Juffa who questioned why grants had not been remitted to provinces on a timely basis and when outstanding grants for this year would be paid.
Abel said the functional grants were critical to services provided by provincial governments.
“Unfortunately, historically when it comes to priority in difficult cash-flow situations, elements of the budget like the functional grants tend to get the lower priority,” Abel said.
“They tend to focus on other things that are important like wages, loan repayments, tuition fee-free funding.
“Certainly in the last couple of years functional grants had suffered in that sense.”
He said 25 per cent of the functional grants had already been released to the provinces.
“As we come into some revenue flows this week and next week, my instructions to the bureaucracy is to look at all elements of the expenditure in terms of our budget and to make sure that we bring it up to 40 per cent hopefully by next week,” Abel said.
“If some (provinces) received 30 per cent and others received 10 per cent, bring that balance up so that everybody across the board in terms of functional grants receive at least 40 per cent.
“That’s the only commitment we can make.”
Juffa said the functional grants was a problem most provinces were facing.
“Sometimes we had to fork out funds or personally to meet costs.
“Functional grants for Oro for 2017 of K6.5 million is outstanding for November and December.
“For this quarter we are supposed to receive K5 million, we only received K1.5 million,” Juffa said.