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{
    "id": 1379402,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1379402/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 192,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Navakholo, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Emannuel Wangwe",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Deputy Speaker. Indeed, it is true, and it was mentioned and pronounced by the then Speaker that I had a balance of 40 minutes, which I want to consume. To bring my colleagues who were not there up to speed, this Report of the Public Investments Committee talks about 23 State corporations, which are duly incorporated, but for one reason or another, they have failed to comply with the provisions of governance and statutes in our country. Allow me to proceed, especially having gone through the generalities of the observations that we made as a Committee. I would like to remind my colleagues of a few issues that we were looking at when it came to those 23 State corporations. We noted various issues. One of them was lack of autonomy in budgeting, appropriation and budgetary allocations. I had already highlighted those issues but in the interest of bringing my colleagues up to speed, I will emphasise them again. The other issue that contributed to non-compliance by those 23 State corporations was lack of accountability in terms of public funds, and failure to prepare and submit financial statements to the Auditor-General. Those 23 State corporations enjoy public resources, but they do not submit their books of accounts; neither do they prepare financial statements for audit nor audit their statements. We also observed that they failed to prepare and submit statements for unspent money repaid to the national Exchequer account. Despite having received resources, those organisations failed to submit statements for unspent amounts. That means that they would just spend whatever amount and let the rest go. The other issue that we noted as a Committee was that the parent ministries failed to operationalise the State corporations. Some of the 23 State corporations are not failing due to their own shortcomings, but because parent ministries failed to recognise them and give them the life that they required. We also observed that those State corporations lacked substantive accounting officers. This is a substantive issue. Every State corporation must have a substantive accounting officer. The State corporations also failed to keep financial and accounting records that comply with the Public Finance Management Act. We realised that despite the fact that some of those corporations kept books of accounts, they did not meet the threshold of the Public Finance Management Act, 2012. Finally, we also observed weak governance whereby some State corporations are operating without a substantive board of directors and accounting officers, who are the chief executive officers (CEOs). It was also observed that in a majority of the State corporations, the CEOs or managing directors, who could also be called registrars, were serving in an acting capacity, or staff or officers were being seconded from various ministries. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor"
}