The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has described the 2024-2025 mid -year budget statement as unrealistic and full of lies containing false promises.
The party’s Spokesperson on Finance Joseph Mwanamvekha said this in his quick reaction to the mid-term budget document presentation by Finance Minister Simplex Chithyola Banda in Parliament on Wednesday.
Total expenditure in the 2024-25 financial year’s has been revised upwards by K41.5 billion from K5.99 trillion to K6.04 trillion representing a 0.7 percent increase
The 2024-25 development expenditure has been revised to K1.58 trillion from the approved provision of K1.77 trillion.
Both domestically and foreign financed components have reduced by K110.5 billion and K76.8 trillion respectively.
The unforeseen expenditure budget line has been revised to K4.4 billion with additional resources amounting to K3.9 billion provided by the World Bank going towards disaster response from the Catastrophe Deferred Drawdown Option (CAT DDO).
Mwanamvekha noted that the assumptions made in the budget have never been met citing the increase in expenditure and revenue coming down.
“It means that as I did predict last time, that that budget was unrealistic they will never met what they promised in that budget and what I said here is actually a true reflection of what I said in my responses last time they presented the budget in March and if you have noted most of the expenditure has gone to consumption and not development because development is constituting 14 percent of the totaI budget.
“In other ways we’re a more consuming nation and we’re not pushing on development that’s what it means from there”
Chithyola Banda announced the removal of Value Added Tax (VAT) waiver on motor vehicle imports for privileged individuals and organizations such as the State President, his Vice, retired Presidents and VP’s, Ministers, legislators, judiciary senior officials including Judges and senior military officials.
“”Once this VAT bill has been passed, these privileged individuals will now pay VAT when purchasing duty free motor vehicles. I therefore, urge all members to support this Bill when it is tabled in this August House”
However Mwanamvekha casted doubt on the effectiveness of the tax exemption noting that Ministers and legislators have already bought the vehicles and exhausted their allocation of three and two cars respectively.
In his presentation, the Finance Minister justified small yellowish stickers on products called electronic tax stamps which he said will help the Malawi Revenue Authority verify whether excise tax has been paid on goods such as alcoholic beverages, cigarettes, soft drinks and bottled water.
According to the DPP Spokesperson, the tax stamps is not a new thing as it has always been there and never made any impact on revenues.
In regards to the establishment of a voluntary tax compliance window for motorcycle operators, the Dpp parliamentarian criticized government for not considering them arguing their income is not much and doesn’t fall within the tax bracket.
“So to punish them further to say they should be going there to me it’s very unfortunate and as DPP we wouldn’t want to support that”
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