Chiphiko: Nation needs to pray 5 times a day to achieve such ambitious rate of growth |
The Parliamentary Committee on
Budget says nothing tangible for this year’s Budget to make the Malawi economy
register real GDP growth rate from 3.1 to 5.1 percent.
Chairperson for the Committee,
Rhino Chiphiko finished presenting the Committee's findings on Tuesday in the
National Assembly, a response to Minister of Finance Goodall Gondwe's recently
presented K1.136 trillion national budget estimates in the National Assembly
for the 2016/17 financial year.
Parliamentary Budget Committee
Chairperson, Rhino Chiphiko says his Committee established that the only
positive areas in the budget has been large allocation to the Ministry of
Agriculture which represent 17 percent of the total national budget and
allocation for the food purchase.
The committee further noted the
proposals to reform the Farm Input Subsidy Program and plans in Public Finance
Management.
However, the Budget committee
found number of worrying developments in the Budget which led the Committee to
conclude that Malawi will fail to achieve real growth.
"Mr. Speaker Sir, events in
the natural, or, Act of God, and in the human realm portend a difficult future.
Climate change and extreme adverse weather events, unstable exchange rate,
persistent high inflation, high interest rates and constrained fiscus, all
portend a sluggish and depressed economy. An economy is in an Intensive Care
Unit (ICU) like a patient on a Life Supporting Machine. Malawi is in an economic
crisis." emphasised Chiphiko with urge that "But we must do
something" mentioning lowering of interest rates and boost industrial
production.
In the Committee findings
presentation, performance of many sectors in the Malawi will be adversely
affected by poor performance of the Agriculture sector as it is apparent that
climate is still affecting the sector yet Malawi continues to depend on the
sector.
According to Chiphiko, later in
an interview said Malawi may this year register a negative 2.5 growth rate and
not surpass the average growth in the regional which is around 3 percent. He
said the committee believes that Ministers projected growth figure will need
the nation "to pray more than 5 times a day in order to achieve such
ambitious rate of growth."
Chiphiko said the budget has
large allocation on expenditure for the public debt charges and interest
repayment and that this will make Malawi fail to meet Millennium Development
Goals as less has been allocated to the Development programmes.
His committee further notes that
interest rates in banks remains stubbornly high making lives of many to be
unbearable in the year which 8 million Malawians will face food shortage.
The Committee emphasise that
interests rates must be revised downwards to make people able to borrow from
banks and able to repay loans at reasonable rates.
The Committee has among others
noted that number of tax proposals cannot lead to any economic recovery and may
even push the economy deeper into recession.
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