Public Sector Cost Management
This analysis assesses the effectiveness of the Government’s announced initiative to control expenditures and reduce costs where it is possible without reducing the quality of public services.
Sikika’s Public Finance Governance (PFG) Programme was founded in 2016. Our core mission is to promote good financial governance and practices through research in a wide range of subjects such as taxation, public expenditure management, auditing and oversight to promote policy change in Tanzania.
Our advocacy strategy is based on innovative research and recommendations which we share through presentations and policy briefs with Tanzanian policy-makers at the national level and policy implementers and the local level. We also hold media conferences to raise public awareness of structural issues in the public financial management sector and call for change.
Sikika’s Public Finance Governance Programme consists of four objectives to strengthen revenue management, fiscal planning and budgeting, financial control and oversight, and the civic space of civil society organisations.
The achievement of Tanzania’s Development Vision 2025 and the Sustainable Development Goals requires the substantial mobilisation of resources to finance public investments, social services, and social protection programmes for vulnerable groups. This study report identifies alternative fiscal and monetary policy options which may enhance public sector resource by more than 7% of GDP.
This study looks into Tanzania’s tax policies, laws, guidelines and regulations to identify issues that may be inhibiting high levels of tax revenue collection and to assess and identify existing gaps and opportunities for increasing the tax base and tax compliance in Tanzania.
This analysis assesses the effectiveness of the Government’s announced initiative to control expenditures and reduce costs where it is possible without reducing the quality of public services.
A Qualitative Analysis of the Oversight Committees and the Implementation of their Directives at Central and Local Level.
The main actors in Tanzania’s accountability system are the parliamentary oversight committees: the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which is responsible for scrutinising central government expenditure, and the Local Authorities Accounts Committee (LAAC), which examines local government spending. This report considers the effectiveness of the PAC and LAAC in exercising their oversight functions including, but not limited to, the monitoring and follow-up of the implementation of the committees’ audit recommendations.
An assessment of budget transparency, participation and accountability at the local government level.
The Subnational Open Budget Survey (SN OBS) is a tool, developed by the International Budget Partnership, to measure the practised levels of budget transparency and citizen participation at the local government level. The survey questions address the timely availability of the budget documents at the local government level, the mechanisms for their dissemination, the types of information they contain, and the quality of the channels for citizen input into the budget process. Sikika’s Public Finance Governance Programme in August 2020 surveyed 7 Local Government Authorities including Arusha City Council (CC), Dodoma CC, Kigoma District Council (DC), Kinondoni Municipal Council (MC), Korogwe DC, Morogoro MC, and Singida MC. The main finding was that citizens are not able to access budget documents because they are treated as “for internal use only”.
This research was conducted in 2021 to provide stakeholders of the Public Finance Management Reform Programme with an assessment of the performance and attributes of the internal audit function at the local government level in comparison with international standards and to provide recommendations to policymakers on how the internal audit function may be strengthened. For that purpose, this research solicited the views and recommendations from relevant stakeholders at the local and central government level to see how the governance framework should be changed to ensure that the internal audit function adds value to local government authorities.
In a national effort to mobilise domestic resources, Local Government Authorities are required to raise own-source revenues from a largely informal economy where revenue collection is inefficient due to low tax compliance. Compliance risk management at the local government level is further complicated by the diversity of local revenue sources and taxpayer segments. In such an environment, compliance research projects can support the design of effective compliance treatment strategies.
For that purpose, Sikika decided to look into the drivers of tax compliance by collecting information from taxpayers to help local governments design tailored treatment strategies that promote voluntary tax compliance and the achievement of revenue mobilisation targets. The research was conducted in January and February 2022 in 8 geographically balanced regions and involved 24 taxpayer focus groups who discussed their experienced challenges and also made recommendations for LGA revenue administrations to promote tax compliance and the efficient collection of revenues.