The new head of the Supreme Audit Chamber (SAC) Alikhan Smailov reported to the plenary session of the Mazhilis on the execution of the republican budget for 2023. According to the audit results, the amount of inefficient use of budget funds amounted to 489 billion tenge.
Alikhan Smailov expressed concern about the low efficiency of budget fund utilisation. Notably, during the audited period, the government was headed by himself. Now, reporting on the shortcomings, Smailov stated that responsibility for the unmet targets rests solely with specific state bodies.
The head of the SAC elaborated on the spending of budget funds allocated to key national projects. As an example, Smailov cited the national project "Comfortable School", for which funding was provided in full in 2023, yet only 38% of the project was implemented.
Furthermore, 37 design and estimate documents were not developed on time according to a single standard. Of the 207 concluded contracts for turnkey design and construction, only 26 projects received a positive conclusion from the non-departmental expert review.
A similar lag is observed for the project "Modernisation of Rural Healthcare". The design for 227 facilities has not been completed. At the beginning of this year, 17% of facilities had not been commissioned.
________________
For comparison: According to the SAC report on the execution of the republican budget for 2022, 9 national projects were being implemented, with 8.1 trillion tenge allocated, expecting overall implementation to reach 98.1%. For 7 national projects, a low level of efficiency was observed, driven by a lag behind target parameters in the previous year.
According to Smailov, in 2023 central state bodies did not achieve 12% of macro-indicators, whereas budget expenditures were nearly 100% executed.
_______________
For comparison: According to the SAC report on the execution of the republican budget for 2022, of 94 macro-indicators, 17 were not achieved (which constitutes 18%).
In addition, Smailov noted that despite granting local administrations greater autonomy in solving regional problems, cases of low work efficiency have been observed. Due to the transfer of targeted current transfers into the base of general transfers, financial assistance to local budgets amounted to nearly 5 trillion tenge. Targeted transfers amounted to a further nearly 2 trillion tenge.
________________
For comparison: In 2022, more than 1 billion tenge was allocated from the republican budget to regions as targeted transfers for development. The majority (64%) of these funds were financed through transfers from the National Fund.
Meanwhile, according to the results of a recent audit, in just the Abai, Zhetysu, Ulytau regions and Almaty region, non-compliance with the standard construction timelines for budget investment projects amounted to 27%.
It is noted that project implementation is sometimes delayed by up to 10 years, leading to cost overruns. For projects not completed on time, a total cost overrun of more than 60% has already been recorded. In these 4 regions alone, payment for uncompleted work totalled nearly 3.4 billion tenge.
According to SAC data, quasi-public sector entities received financing of nearly 1.2 trillion tenge from the republican budget in 2023. At the same time, their unspent balance at the end of the year increased more than 2.5 times compared to the previous period.
________________
For comparison: In 2022, financing for quasi-public sector entities amounted to 722.2 billion tenge (which is 42% more, than in 2021). The volume of the unspent balance at the end of 2022 amounted to 46.3 billion tenge.
As of January 2024, the government's debt obligations amount to 24.9 trillion tenge. It is noted that the peak burden on the budget for servicing attracted loans falls in 2024-2025.
Recall that a year ago, former head of the SAC Natalya Godunova spoke at a plenary session on the execution of the republican budget for 2022, where she criticised the actions of Alikhan Smailov's government.