The Ministry of Finance's consultancy costs rose by 600 percent between 2015 and 2019.
It's about astronomical sums - sometimes more than half a million euros per consultant.
Munich - consultants are trendy - but trained outside know-how is not cheap.
This is especially true for the federal government and especially for the Ministry of Finance of Olaf Scholz (SPD).
As the
Tagesspiegel
reports, a project manager there earned 646,000 euros from 2018 to 2019, far more than Chancellor Angela Merkel (250,000 euros annual salary).
Horrible consultant fees: 90 percent go to IT consultants
From 2015 to 2019, the Ministry's costs for consultants rose from 5.3 million to 30.4 million euros, which is a jump of 600 percent.
Interesting: 90 percent of this expenditure goes to IT consultants!
The paper has a report in which there is talk of 63 million euros in consultancy expenses for all federal ministries, which had grown to 248 million euros by 2017.
In the Ministry of Finance alone, an incredible 186.1 million was spent on consultants in the first half of 2020.
Transparency Germany sees no problem - criticism from the Greens
The use of consultants is considered controversial, but Transparency Germany sees this as unproblematic - an outside view of the state bureaucracy is helpful.
But, as Senior Advisor Peter Conze emphasizes: "The rise in consultancy costs in a ministry with hundreds of highly qualified civil servants is very surprising at this level and should be questioned."
There is also criticism from the Greens.
Sven-Christian Kindler, house policy spokesman for the parliamentary group of the alliance, told the
Tagesspiegel
: "
Despite
all the difficulties, getting new private consultancies for a lot of money is not a responsible way of dealing with the taxpayers' money."