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by
The devils must be tamed, 24 October 2003
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14:07:43
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Anonymous
Honourable Folks, I would like to congratulate Finance Minister, the Hon. Friday Jumbe, on performing the economic miracle of the century. For two years he’s been budgeting on donor money purely by faith, like a good Christian. The owners were unwilling to release funds, fearing they would only be feeding the insatiable appetite for luxury of people in government instead of the poor people of Malawi.
Jumbe’s colleagues in government didn’t seem to care. They saw donor criticism of overexpenditure as interference in the internal affairs of Malawi, an independent sovereign state. “We would rather be poor looking up than down,” His Excellency the President, himself, declared.
Predictably, things fell apart. Denmark shut down its embassy and withdrew its funding, thereby crippling education, good governance and human rights programmes. Equally unimpressed, particularly with the diversion of funds from the “protected” pro-poor budgetary allocation, IMF, too, froze its support in 2001, a move which automatically led to the freezing of budgetary support by donors.
Like a plane without fuel, the economy lost control and nose-dived heading for a catastrophic fall. Yet some people in government were still adamant, arguing that Malawi could survive without donor aid. In fact, as late as September 29, this year, His Excellency the President was quoted as telling the international community while on a visit to Japan that Malawi did not need handouts but fair markets for its produce! Common sense tells me we need both. What do you think?
Yet Jumbe remained level-headed, trying to please his colleagues in Cabinet and IMF at the same time. Congratulations, Mr. Minister, for being a good pilot of the economy. We anticipated that the free-falling of the economy would end into a crash, somehow that has been avoided and we’ve only experienced a bumpy landing.
Of course there are bruises and fractures. Our foreign exchange reserves can only last a month, local debt is at over K50 billion, many big and small companies have closed and high interest rates are almost at 50 percent. The country has also lost the momentum to create jobs, generate wealth and move on towards the realisation of our collective Vision 2020. UNDP tells us that, rather than moving towards becoming a middle-income nation, we’re poorer than we were in 1992!
Yet the coming back of IMF is a rescue operation which has made Jumbe heave a sigh of relief. Confessed the pilot of our economy to reporters on Monday: “We had reached very worrying levels. Our foreign exchange levels were low and I was particularly worried myself because it should have actually meant that the kwacha should have gone anywhere.”
It already has, Honourable minister! On October 20, 2000 the kwacha was selling at K80 to the dollar. On October 20, 2003 it was at K109.45 to a dollar, a fall by a good 37 percent. Only that had we failed to secure donor support this year, the kwacha would’ve continued rolling helplessly on its back down the economic cliff.
I would like to put my case straight: IMF and the donor community cannot be blamed for the suffering of Malawians in the past three years. It is our own government which is 100 percent to blame. It promised the people poverty alleviation but its huge spending on non-priority areas could only have meant a transfer of wealth from the 12 million Malawians to a few individuals holding positions in the cabinet and government.
Imagine, my friend in the diplomatic circles tells me that in the wake of mounting criticism over extravagance, the government reviewed its travel budget, reducing it by a billion kwacha. Will someone tell me just how many billions our government allocated to the globe-trotting of the fat-cats in the first class cabin of Jumbo jets? And what’s there to show for all the expensive trips already made?
The way forward is for government to tame its devils and realise that public revenue is for public service and not self-enrichment or aggrandisement. Let the people who generate their own wealth spend it as they please but the President, his Cabinet and government officials should spend public funds prudently for the good of the people.
There ought to be zero-tolerance of corruption and fraud. Transparency, accountability and good political and economic governance ought to be the culture in government. But should selfishness continue to take centre-stage, we shall lose the donor support again and be worse off than we were in 1964. Our independence will be a big joke. |
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