Maravi

2011 budget lacks inspiration - Magande

COMMENT - Donors are not 'benefactors'. Donor aid is not charity. If anything, it are the Zambian people who are donating their copper to the world, because they are not getting paid for it. And copper profits amount to $2.5 billion a year, while donor aid is only about $700 million.

2011 budget lacks inspiration - Magande
By Kombe Chimpinde
Sun 17 Oct. 2010, 04:00 CAT

NG’ANDU Magande has said the reduction in donor funding to the government coffers is a clear indication that the benefactors have lost confidence in President Rupiah Banda’s regime.

And Magande has expressed doubt over the MMD’s ability to move the country's domestic revenue from the current 15 per cent to 18 per cent of the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) achieved two years ago. In an interview, Magande, a former finance minister, said next year’s budget lacked innovation and inspiration.

Magande said donors and Zambians were slowly losing confidence in the MMD going by the low levels of grants and domestic revenue reflected in next year’s budget.

“We had a very comprehensive arrangement with donors. We built that over a period of three years. We worked mechanisms under the Paris Declarations, where we said we want you donors to trust us. I had a very nice time by the time I was leaving because I would call a donor if I had a US $2 billion dollar deficit for salaries of public service workers. Within two days the money would be in the Bank of Zambia,” Magande said on Tuesday.

[Two billion? - MrK]

“This was because they knew I would not take even one kwacha of that into my pocket. It was not money I would bring perhaps to finance holidays for the late Levy Mwanawasa to go on some holiday in Mfuwe.”

Magande said the 2011 budget seemed ambitious.

“It would seem really like we are all anxious at the figure which has gone up from K16 trillion in 2010 to K20 trillion 2011 which is a 25 per cent increase,” he noted.

“It might be just a number, but the actual execution could obviously be very different. I have a problem with where they will get the money because they are still insisting they don’t want to change the mining tax regime.

“They think what they have is good. The economy of the country is growing but the revenue collections are going down which gives us a clear indication that some of the big economic operations in Zambia are happening outside.”

Magande observed that raising the intended revenue from the country’s economic activities would be more challenging with the removal of the abuse of office offence clause from the revised Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) Act.

“Even the question of diversification which the minister is talking about, we have to be a bit imaginative. Just like irrigation, government has been talking about irrigation but has not mapped out a way for local farmers to do this,” he said.

Magande said it was erroneous for the MMD government to continue promising to deliver change to the people without facilitating self-development among people to enable them achieve their aspirations. Magande said the concentration on building roads and infrastructure alone would not trigger any meaningful growth for as long as people were not empowered.

“We are putting emphasis on roads. For instance, the Choma-Chitongo road a beautiful tarmac road, but what do you expect if you have no plans for the people around or on the sides of the road? Those are farmers, they grow crops, they rear cattle; how does this road suddenly improve their conditions?” he wondered.

Magande said the MMD clearly had no modern, innovative and organised manner of governance. Magande’s comments come in the wake of the reduction in donor support to the 2011 national budget.

Labels: 2011 BUDGET, NG'ANDU MAGANDE

posted by MrK @ 3:41 AM