Britain rules out budgetary support resumption to Malawi
Britain has ruled out resumption of budgetary support to Malawi despite the southern African nation qualifying for IMF extended credit facility.
British High Commission to Malawi Michael Nevin said this after Finance minister Goodall Gondwe presented a K1.2 trillion national budget.
“It is not only in Malawi, we are moving away from this type of support in many countries,” he said.
Gondwe announced that World Bank and European Union are set to resume budgetary support in the course of the new financial year which starts in July.
The Finance Minister said out of the K1.2 trillion, the government will only be able to locally fund the budget up to K965.2 billion and the rest will come from donors.
Gondwe asked the revenue collector, the Malawi Revenue Authority to pull up socks and collect the targetted K708 billion set by the IMF.
”MRA should do more at this crucial moment,” he said.
Opposition Peoples Party spokesperson on finance Ralph Jooma laughed off the budget saying if the government knows it can only finance it up to K965 billion, why has the government pushed it to K1.2 trillion.
Malawi Congress Party (MCP) Spokesperson on Finance Kusamba Dzonzi, who is also member of Parliament (MP) for Dowa West described the 2016/17 National Budget as ‘hostile to Malawians and cannot be implemented without donor support’.
Malawians,Britain and other EU Nations,are snakes in the grass.They know pretty well that the funds allocated to the government of Malawi do not reach the poor people,but they keep on sending the money via crooked leadership who misuses it as a result,there is indescribable failures in revamping the economy.The EU-donor nations must devise workable mechanisms to make sure that the funds go where it is needed the most,otherwise,the lives of our people will continue to deteriorate each day passes.
The usual talk of UK ending direct budgetary support to Malawi!! The money still comes from the UK, just as before, but now via the EU, the World Bank, the IMF. The tragedy is that all this aid money goes into useless prestige projects, like the Lilongwe stadium, luxury hotels, presidential motorcades, and very little to poor Malawian farmers.
Well said!
Yet poor Malawi farmers are about 83% of the population. Will they ever rouse themselves and demand their fair share of government services? They have the numbers, but they do not recognize the power inherent in these numbers. Together, they constitute Malawi’s sleeping giant. When they become conscious of this fact, perhaps they will organize themselves and Malawi will be led by the productive section of our population, for a change.
Oh oh so what happened to all those congratulatory messages that flooded the newspapers and the airwaves and the mpwevumpwevu that followed IMF assessment?
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