Moses Magadza
LILONGWE - Southern African Development Community countries have been urged to recognise the important contribution that women and the youth make in agricultural activities and set aside a specific quota in their national budgets to ensure food security in the region.
This was the recommendation the Standing Committee on Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources (FANR) made in a report to the 51st Plenary Assembly Session of the SADC Parliamentary Forum that was hosted by the parliament of Malawi on 13 July 2022.
The committee recognised that the majority of the world’s poor live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, and that agriculture is both a source of food security and a core economic activity across all SADC states.
Agriculture is therefore critical for economic development and poverty reduction, noted the committee that is chaired by Ishmael Onani of Malawi with Hawa Subira Mwaifunga from Tanzania as vice chairperson.
The committee called for SADC member states to strengthen parliaments’ oversight role over public finance spending, with a special focus on the procurement of agricultural inputs.
“Member states must be encouraged to sensitise their citizens to identify fraudulent public spending in the agriculture value chain,” said the committee.
The committee further encouraged member states to provide citizens with platforms they can use to report incidences of financial malpractices in the agriculture sector, noting that smallholder farmers are the most affected by illicit financial flows in the sector.
It also highlighted the need for states to create an enabling environment for parliaments to meaningfully engage in the budget process by ensuring that adequate time and resources are made available for MPs to execute their oversight role without any impediments.
In addition, the FANR committee called for the empowerment of parliamentarians with the necessary knowledge to participate effectively in the budget process, and notably, in public spending on agriculture.
Spending on agriculture is one of the most important government instruments for promoting economic growth and alleviating poverty in developing countries, especially the rural areas, the committee noted.
Ahead of the presentation of the report to the plenary session in Malawi, the standing committee on FANR held one statutory meeting on 01 May, 2022, where it considered the theme: ‘Participation of Parliaments towards Building Resilient Agricultural Systems in the SADC Region through Enhanced Public Finance Management’.
It was highlighted to the committee that agriculture is one of the key economic sectors and significantly contributes to the gross domestic product (GDP) and poverty reduction in the region.
However, there are low investments towards the agriculture sector. The challenge is further exacerbated by imprudent utilisation of the meagre resources resulting in ill-performing agriculture sectors and threatening the food security of the region.
The committee also recognised that resilient agriculture systems are, among others, a product of optimal utilisation of public resources and the principles inherent in public financial management (PFM) systems if well utilised, can immensely contribute to the growth of the sector and boost food security for the region.
In addition, the committee realised that parliaments can become a powerful tool to heighten the strength and resilience of agricultural systems through interrogating government measures relating to agriculture in the budget and demand explanations on the fulfillment of the commitments that countries have made both at regional and global level.
The SADC Model Law on Public Financial Management, developed by the forum, will augment existing member state efforts in ensuring accountability and transparency in the use of public resources in implementing agricultural programmes.
During deliberation on the theme of the meeting, the committee was reminded that the agriculture sector contributes between four and 27% of GDP among the different SADC countries, and about 13% of export earnings overall.
Furthermore, as about 70% of the region’s population depends on agriculture for food, income, and employment SADC countries committed to several continental and regional aspirations on agriculture.
A notable one is the Maputo Declaration, which calls for member states to increase agricultural budget allocations to 10% of GDP and pursue 6% agricultural growth in addition to setting up the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP).
Instruments that inform and guide the agriculture sector in the region include the Regional Agricultural Policy of 2013 and Regional Agricultural Investment Plan for the period 2017-2022, among others.
However, progress in agriculture in the region remains static, partly due to lack of accountability and transparency in the use of public resources in implementing agricultural programmes.
Many countries in the world face challenges related to financial mismanagement such as poor financial reporting practice, weak internal control systems, weak financial administration, unethical relationships with vendors of agriculture supplies and uncoordinated spending at the end of the budget year.
This, coupled with corruption in government contracts or licenses for agricultural supplies, makes it difficult to attain resilient agriculture systems.
During the presentation on the Participation of Parliaments Towards Building Resilient Agricultural Systems in the SADC region through Enhanced Public Finance Management, the committee noted that the PFM involved the collection, management and expenditure of public finances in an economy.
The committee further noted that the central objective of PFM was to improve citizens’ lives through better management of public finances and acknowledged that agriculture was core to the economies of most SADC states and played a fundamental role in transforming livelihoods in many African countries.
In that regard, effective PFM was premised on the understanding that scarce resources had maximum impact if deployed where they were needed the most. This assisted governments to achieve their agricultural policies and other development objectives in a progressive and sustainable way.
The committee took cognisance that members of parliament, as elected officials representing their constituencies, played a pivotal role throughout the PFM cycle.
It also noted that sustainability of the budget, including debt management, was the responsibility of the respective ministries of finance, which were charged with ensuring that there was efficiency among the different government ministries and agencies.
Emphasis was placed on the need to ensure robust conceptualisation of capital expenditures, especially those on infrastructure, through the annual and medium-term budgeting processes.
The committee also noted that in programme-based budgeting, there was a need to align planning and budgeting systems to ensure that outputs and outcomes were associated with public policy objectives.
In terms of prudent budget execution, the committee acknowledged that legislative oversight was integral to reviewing budget execution reports to ensure public resources were used in the manner they were approved for.