IT isn’t surprising that some experts are seeing more and more of the need for the government to strengthen the monitoring of funds borrowed for development projects to ensure a true reflection of the real value of work delivered.

Trouble is that this refrain is being raised chiefly in view of the need to curb Tanzania’s rising national debt, whereas it is basically a governance issue related to equity and probity.

The issue surfaced at a stakeholders’ meeting on the national debt, public borrowing and development opportunities in the capital at midweek, with a university don emphatic on the need for scrutiny in that borrowing was unavoidable.

Governments have options on how to supervise the use of whatever funds they borrow for projects but are unlikely to have options about whether they need to borrow money.

Singling out the need for careful supervision of borrowed funds spent on implementing projects budgeted for is an admission that there are weaknesses in the way public funds are spent.

It is proposed that this should not be the case for funds that are borrowed from outside, as it is easy to know that a proposal is unworkable and any additional oversight on what happens can only occur on the basis of well-known methods of work.

Were it that repayments for each project for which money has been borrowed would have to be sourced from the project for which the cash was borrowed, that would definitely be different.

If this sort of problem posting and prescription for solutions was workable, reforms would not be necessary, as reforms change the sourcing and managing of loans to relate to competitive borrowers and users where there is no one to cheat in the middle.

When loans are altered from the public funds format to revolving credits, first-batch borrowers need to return substantial amounts loaned from total funds borrowed so that more can be borrowed.

Banks thus make no losses, which is different from funds being handed to contractors working with a public agency and free of any repayments.

Those calling on the government to tighten oversight and cut unnecessary expenditures for risking accumulating debts bringing little or no benefit to the public are only partially correct, as they should be addressing our overall ability to use loans gainfully.

The record may differ but we have over the past decade done some good things, even if not all stakeholders will admit as much.

This is, for instance, with respect to the observation that the standard gauge railway speed train project here costs half by kilometer cost in comparison with a similar project across our country’s northern border. Again, when conditions change, costing margins tend to be widened by the delay mechanism; all that constitutes part of governance.