|
People’s Progressive Movement (PPM) on Tuesday said it would continue to analyse and scrutinise the proposed 2004/2005 budget and offer further insight that would enable the august House to approve a much more realistic budget than has been the case in previous years.
Responding to the 2004/2005 budget presented in Parliament last Friday by Finance Minister Goodall Gondwe, PPM’s vice president Mark Katsonga-Phiri said much as the budget is realistic, there was still need for constructive input from the members of Parliament.
Katsonga Phiri said PPM concedes to the finance minister’s statement that fiscal laxity and negligence are root causes of the economic problems that the country is facing, adding the party would support initiatives that counteract past tendencies of the executive in disrespecting budgets approved by Parliament..
“We support the initiative to operate the first half of the budget under an IMF staff monitored programme as an avenue to implement appropriate systems to ensure fiscal probity whilst at the same time restore our reputation with our friends in the donor community with whom we enjoyed enviable rapport,” said Katsonga Phiri.
But he said the huge domestic debt that has been increased by over 400% in three-and-half years was as a result of borrowing by the executive to satisfy their selfish needs rather than establishing a conducive environment that would have encouraged growth in production.
“To liquidate our local debt faster and easier, we would even advocate seeking external financing to act as a bridge by reducing our interest exposure by paying off local debt which attracts untenable high interest rates and then proceeding to pay off the external bank loans which are normally at about 6% only compared to 35% and above on local debt,” he said.
While applauding the increase of civil servants salaries to a minimum wage of K4,500,($42) Katsonga Phiri said it would have been better if such wage increases were linked to performance.
“By the way, Madam First Deputy Speaker, traditional authorities and their village headmen in some areas still wait for periods of over six months in some cases to get their wage. We hope the new wage policy will eliminate these unnecessary delays,” he added.
On rural credit facility, he said previously there were funds such as Poverty Alleviation Fund, Small and Medium Enterprise Fund (SMEF) which he said were proclaimed to be targeted towards poor rural masses but disbursement was politically influenced.
“We pray that this fund will not follow all the others into eventual oblivion and that it will benefit all needy Malawians on merit and not because of party affiliations,” he said.
On food shortages, Katsonga Phiri said PPM was much aware that a disaster is yet to strike people especially in rural areas but said this would be worsened by the commercialisation of Admarc which would make distributions to rural areas difficult.
“Madam First Deputy Speaker, many depots in the remotest areas were closed due to supposed “non-profitability” which conflict with the new profit oriented policies that emerged with commercialisation of Admarc. Ironically, it will probably be those same areas that now need help, and the necessary infrastructure will no longer be available,” he added.
|
