The Budget Advocacy Network (BAN) has sharply criticized the central government for failing to disburse funds allocated to local councils for the 2025 fiscal year, as well as for leaving significant arrears from 2024 unpaid.

The group warns that the prolonged delays are crippling service delivery and undermining public confidence in the government’s decentralization agenda.

According to BAN, as of August 11, 2025, not a single local council has received its 2025 budget allocation. Meanwhile, councils are still awaiting the payment of outstanding funds from 2024, a situation the organization says has left them “financially crippled.”

BAN’s Chairman, Abu Brima, described the non-disbursement as a “systematic sabotage of decentralization” and “an injustice to millions of citizens” who depend on local authorities for essential services. He further accused the government of violating its legal obligations under the Local Government Act of 2022, which mandates timely transfers to local councils.

The organization provided detailed figures to illustrate the scale of the shortfall. While local councils receive less than 2% of the national budget, actual disbursements are even lower. In 2024, councils received only 61% of their allocated funds — NLe120.9 million out of NLe199.8 million. Of the outstanding 2024 funds, only NLe28.9 million was transferred in the second quarter of 2025.

For 2025, the original budget for local councils was NLe344.1 million, later revised down to NLe287.4 million in the supplementary budget. Despite the reduction, BAN says no disbursements have been made to date.

BAN has called on the Ministry of Finance and other key government stakeholders to release the funds without further delay and to publish a clear, transparent, and time-bound disbursement schedule, specifying the amounts due to each council.