Madang passes K99mil budget

National, Normal
Source:

The National – Tuesday, February 1, 2011

By STEPHANIE ELIZAH
THE Madang provincial assembly yesterday passed the province’s 2011 budget of K99,836,700 which comprised K79,443,100 of grants from the national government and K10,893,200 from internal revenue.
Handing down the budget, Governor and chairman for finance and planning James Gau said his government which had been in office less than six months, was still trying to understand why the service delivery system that was in was not working.
He said that to know that, leaders of the province much to firstly understand that the provincial government did not have the capacity in terms of revenue to enhance self-sufficiency or self-reliance in delivery of goods and services.
“We probably need more time to appreciate the mechanism and may not have the time to participate in improving and developing policies that will refine and make it more responsive to the needs of our people,” Gau said.
He added that instead of the people chasing after services, the public service must be made to be responsive and proactive rather than be reactive and isolated.
“This budget attempts to direct the very limited internally raised revenue to the most needed and priority expenditure areas of this government – a government that must be led by or seen to be driven by presidents of local level governments in Madang,” Gau said.
In brief, allocation of unconditional grants totaling K67,337,700 included coverage to education (K3.3 million), transport, building and infrastructure (K5.8 million), health received K4.4 million and K1.2 million was allocated for public service leave fares.
Conditional grant totaling K12,105,400 was derived from primary products grant, NADP funds, MP’s non discretionary fund and rural local level government grant.
Allocation of the provincial internal revenue total of K10,893,200 included appropriation of K2.6 million to the provinces’ 19 local level governments, Manam restoration and relief supplies of K200,000 and the provincial administration received K2.4 million.