A Research Proposal Submitted In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Award of Masters in Science in Accounting and Finance (Msc A&F) Of Mzumbe University
Specific efforts to bring up changes that will lead LGAs, towards effective budget practice are, however, the most actual core demand from all of their day-to-day operations. By so doing, notably, the solution will be concrete. In such, this study was mainly aiming at identifying factors for budget malpractice in Local Government Authorities (LGAs) in Tanzania; the case of Morogoro Municipal Council (MMC), in Morogoro region, Tanzania. The methodology employed, had agglomerated a series of methods including; documentary review in gathering secondary data from various sources, while questionnaire and interview were used as specific instruments for gathering primary data from the field (sample size) of 80 respondents. Likewise, tables and figures, both illustrated by percentage, were specifically employed as instruments for presenting data, upon which further analytical/discussion steps were performed, from which; conclusion, and recommendations were drawn upon. Recognizably, specific objectives of the study were; to determine the consequence of fund misallocation on budget practice, to examine whether there is a tendency of lust for misappropriating budget allocated resources among public servants that cause budget malpractice at MMC, to determine whether there is low budget supervision that leads to budget malpractice, and to suggest ways to be adopted by LGAs in effectively using budgets.
Based on the findings, the study concluded that factors responsible for the actually ravaging problem of budget malpractice amongst LGAs in Tanzania were; misallocation of budgeted resources especially fund, tendency to misappropriate budget allocated funds by certain public servants, purchasing of non-budgeted items, inappropriate procurement procedure, corruption tendency, theft tendency, and so many others, excluding budget supervision. Based on these findings, particular suggestions were eventually drawn that, if and only if LGAs are to mitigate the problem of budget malpractice, certain ways would necessarily be adopted by them. In fact, theses had included issues like; improve budget supervisions, increase inventory management, increase financial controls, That is to say; much effort and zeal would be placed on
internal audit so that budget are appropriately managed and latter on well-practiced as well. Meanwhile, the study had recommended that, public servant would get rid of behaviours relating to safeguarding their personal interests and consequently result into fund misappropriating – the situation, which must always cause budget malpractice to occur most frequently.