National News

Editorial: Budget poses challenges for the poor, government

While donors praise the balance government is said to have struck in allocation to the recurrent and development sides of the 2015/16 National Budget largely with local resources, we feel the real focus should be on what’s not being stressed.
We are referring to the impact of government’s squeezed expenditure blueprint on the well-being of the same Malawians in rural areas—majority of whom live on much less than a dollar a day—which donors and government have all along used to justify their joint pro-poor programmes.

Gondwe: Gave the nation a bitter pill to swallow yesterday
Gondwe: Gave the nation a bitter pill to swallow yesterday
If the truth be told, life was hard in the 2014/15 fiscal year and we can only expect the situation to get worse this year of drought, floods and retarded economic growth of less than six percent.
That said, we hope the measures government has put in place for raising revenue will be matched with out-of-the box measures for ensuring that each tambala is used for the intended purpose.
For long, we have lamented the 30 percent of revenue which goes down the drain due to corruption and inefficiency. We wonder what real measures has government put in place to fight these vices.
We also fear that the culture of political interference which has ran down MSB, if not decisively dealt with, will continue haunting the public sector where those in power profiteer on inside trading at the expense of poor Malawians.
On Farm Input Subsidy Programme (Fisp), we commend government for reducing the amount allocated to it. However, the real issue is whether there is an increase in irrigation farming instead.
Malawi’s economic woes have their roots in the fact that our agriculture has not evolved much since the Kamuzu era which ended more than 20 years ago.
We still plant once a year, use the hoe and grow the same type of crops year after year. Yet the agriculture we toy with is the mainstay of the economy.
Unless government addresses these challenges, we do not see much hope in the budget built with local resources leading to sustainable economic growth.

Related Articles

Back to top button