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German gov’t spends over 500 mln euros on external consultants in 2019


Bangladeshpost
Published : 31 Jan 2020 09:45 PM | Updated : 01 Sep 2020 07:45 PM

In 2019, the German government spent more than half a billion euros (553 million U.S. dollars) on external consultants, according to preliminary figures revealed on Friday, reports Xinhua. 

However, four ministries only reported the figures for the first half of the year to date, the German Ministry of Finance (BMF) said in reply to a parliamentary query from the Left Party sent to Xinhua. Although the German Ministry of Defense (BMVg) has only revealed the figures for the first six months of the year, no other ministry had spent more on external consultants. 

According to the government figures, the BMVg alone spent 154.9 million euros on consultancy. Next in the ranking were the Ministry of the Interior with 152.4 million euros and the Ministry of Transport with 110.6 million euros, the figures revealed. Matthias Hoehn, member of the German Bundestag (federal parliament) for the Left Party, said that the government's expenditure on external consultants was "rising to increasingly lofty heights."

Hoehn stressed that the German government had "thousands of competent civil servants in the ministries" who should "do the substantive work." The hiring of consultants by the Ministry of Defense is currently being investigated by a Bundestag committee over alleged irregularities in the awarding of multi-million-euro consultancy contracts. (1 euro=1.10 U.S. dollars)