PRIME Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s office has already spent nearly half of its 2011 budget allocation on foreign travel, state media have claimed.

The reports come on the back of increasing concern over the parlous state of government finances amid reports this year’s budget deficit could top US$500 million.

The Sunday Mail claimed that Tsvangirai’s office had spent more on foreign travel as a proportion of overall expenditure than President Robert Mugabe.

The newspaper reported that, despite allegedly not having a foreign affairs remit, Tsvangirai’s office had spent US$5.8 million (about 42 percent) of its allocated budget on foreign travel.

President Mugabe’s travel costs were said to be 16 percent of his total budget although the newspaper did not divulge how much this represented in actual dollar terms.

The presidency directly employs 498 people while Tsvangirai’s office is said to have a staff complement of 52.

“The contentious issue about the travel budget is not about the quantum of the amount but about the percentage of the amount given the total allocated budget, size of the staffing complement and the amount spent on programmes that support or help the ordinary people and the general public that Government as an institution is supposed to serve in the first place,” the state-owned weekly quoted an unnamed treasury official as saying.

“The figure you are talking about is wrong. The actual figure is much less than U$5 million. I cannot disclose the actual amount that has been spent on the foreign trips but what I know for sure is that it is nowhere near US$5 million,” Tamborinyoka said.

The blame game follows calls for the coalition administration to contain spending with Finance Minister, Tendai Biti warning that the country faced unfunded expenditure pressures of about US$445 million this year.

Biti said the figure did not include recent public service wage increments and additional foreign travel expenses amounting to some US$30million.