Opposition political parties have expressed scepticism on how government is going to implement a revised budget it announced Friday.<\/p>\n
Some have argued that the statement Finance Minister, Goodall Gondwe, delivered in Parliament lacked details.<\/p>\n
According to a midterm budget statement, Finance Minister Goodall Gondwe delivered in the House, the national budget has been reduced from the initial K929.7 billion to K906 billion, representing a reduction of K23.7 billion.<\/p>\n
Leader of opposition Lazarus Chakwera said government was supposed to clearly spell out ways of resuscitating the country\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat he is proposing is something we need to study. And give a proper response on Monday. But it looks that some of the things that need to be looked at closely are things that we need to question, for example, the hope he is talking about. Remember, he has been saying may be this week, may be this month, may be this year, and now is talking about this whole year as the year that he thinks the things will be fixed. One wonders whether that is truly the case,\u201d Chakwera said.<\/p>\n
He added:<\/p>\n
\u201cHe [Gondwe] has been honest enough to say we have to open up to suggestions that will come to members of the House in order for us to know and implement that which Malawians want us to do. Part of the problem has not been lack of suggestions and lack of ideas. Part of the problem from us is lack of political will. That\u2019s why there has been this flip-flopping.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why we hear the Minister saying \u2018we will be okay this month\u2026there are really signs that there is light at the end of the tunnel\u2019. I just hope it is not light of an oncoming train.\u201d<\/p>\n
People\u2019s Party (PP) vice president, Kamlepo Kalua said Gondwe statement lacked details.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy immediate reaction is that it lacks details and economic sense. We are facing problems and my expectation is that the statement was supposed to challenge government ministries, department and agencies to come up with ways of taking the country out of the problems. In short, the statement has failed to spell out shortfalls of the budget and suggested ways of improving the situation,\u201d Kalua said.<\/p>\n
Alliance for Democracy (Aford) president Enock Chihana, also faulted the statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought government would come up with a serious rescue plan. For the Minister of Finance to come and present a very light message to the people of Malawi as if it is not. I expected the government to tell us what they are going to do in the short term, medium term and long term. They have to make sure that they come up with serious plans to make sure that they rescue the economy,\u201d Chihana said.<\/p>\n
He among others said, government has not done well in the areas of food security and availability of drugs in the country\u2019s health facilities.<\/p>\n
Few members of the donor community were present at parliament building, but the most notable one was British High Commissioner, Michael Nevin.<\/p>\n
Nevin hailed government for planning to be financing its activities with its own resources.<\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately we need to get to the point where the macro-economy, is helping the private sector to reinvest and diversify and deliver. That is going to take time. The goal of ensuring that the recurrent expenditure is covered by Malawi\u2019s own resources is a good one,\u201d Nevin said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Opposition political parties have expressed scepticism on how government is going to implement a revised budget it announced Friday. Some have argued that the statement Finance Minister, Goodall Gondwe, delivered in Parliament lacked details. According to a midterm budget statement, Finance Minister Goodall Gondwe delivered in the House, the national budget has been reduced from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19729,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19728"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19730,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19728\/revisions\/19730"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}