Finance Minister Winds Up Mid-Term Budget Review Statement;

Committee of Supply on Thursday

National Assembly Building

The National Assembly will on Thursday begin Committee of Supply authorizing vote by vote of additional resources to be allocated to various government ministries and departments, Leader of House Francis Kasaila announced in the house.

The announcement came following winding up statement of Budget Review statement on Monday by Finance and Economic Planning Minister Goodall Gondwe and curtailment of the General Debate of the statement last Friday.

Gondwe is seeking the house to authorize government use extra resources amounting to K32 billion.

In an interview Kasaila confirmed that documentation of all budget votes is ready “Government is ready for committee of supply.”

However, when winding up his statement Gondwe made an error whereby instead of ending at informing the house to take note of the developments and the way the budget is being implemented he went ahead to ask for an approval for the extra resources which means, the house should have gone into committee of supply. Interestingly the house accepted to approve the extra resources when the speaker Richard Msowoya put the question as motion moved by the Minister that the house approve the resources.

Immediately, a very long argument erupted in the house from some opposition MPs. They questioned why the minister requested the house to approve resources of which its breakdowns (budget votes) were not brought in the house. The development saw other confused MPs expressing worry that by accepting the Minister’s motion the whole house might have approved the budget without being provided with document details of how funds have been allocated to each vote.

Speaker, for several attempts explained to the house that the motion simply meant that the Leader of House shall bring at later day a government business programme for Committee of Supply but to no avail. It took the leader of house honorable Francis Kasaila to end the argument when he told the house that the Committee of Supply is on Thursday and acknowledged the mistake made by the Finance minister.

In an interview Kasaila explained that the confusion on the matter might have been also a result of failure to inform the house the agreed procedure during the Business Committee of the house. 

“Traditionally we have been doing budget review and we have been following supplementary procedures. But we did discuss this issue during our business committee level and agreed that it is irregular that as parliament we are treating budget review as supplementary budget. “

And therefore he continued “what we had agreed this time around was that we will not continue with the same tradition which is not backed up by any of our standing orders and any legislation.”