Zanzibar is launching a digital budgeting and planning system to improve openness in governance.
According to Business Insider, the Island country hopes to establish uniformity and foster responsibility among planners, implementers, and decision-makers with this concept.
The Zanzibar administration claims that manual planning and budgeting would be ineffective.
The East African country reported that the new digital budgeting system, the Planning, Budgeting, and Reporting System (PlanRep), would be developed in conjunction with the United States Agency for International Development.
The Budget officer from the President’s Office of Financing and Planning in Zanzibar, Ms. Khadija Alhaji Bakari, revealed that the previous system used by the government was obsolete and frequently inaccurate.
She mentioned that manual budgeting and planning provided a lot of likelihood for error, which this new digital approach will help to address.
“The old method resulted in numerous errors and inconsistent data. Due to the lack of automatic links, it necessitated lengthy cross-checking, resulting in significant expenses. “Manual systems also provided authorities with limited opportunities to detect funding misuse,” Ms Bakari explained.
According to the study, the Zanzibar Planning and Reporting System “has been integrated with the government’s expenditure management system.”
The Permanent Secretary in the Zanzibar Finance and Planning Ministry, Dr. Juma Malik Akil, stated that with ZanPBRS, government agencies and local governments can now digitally submit plans and budgets for approval, reducing disruptions in executing public initiatives meant to improve citizens’ quality of life.
“Thanks to the system, once funds are allocated, staff from government institutions and local governments can track and report their spending in ZanPBRS for official monitoring.
“Increased transparency ensures that the government’s budget goes where it is supposed to go and improves service delivery to citizens in our communities.”
