Government is not sincere on windfall tax - Chisela

Government is not sincere on windfall tax - Chisela
By Misheck Wangwe in Kitwe
Fri 24 June 2011, 09:10 CAT

THE failure by the government to reintroduce windfall tax will continue to haunt President Rupiah Banda and his Cabinet, says a former ZRA senior official. In an interview yesterday, Tresford Chisela said President Banda’s government had taken people for granted by issuing contradictory explanations and statements justifying their move to abandon windfall tax.

Chisela said finance minister Dr Situmbeko Musokotwane and education minister Dora Siliya were not being sincere with the people on queries that were raised regarding the source of funding for the ongoing road rehabilitations in the country.

He said considering that mining companies were reaping super profits, the re-introduction of windfall tax was inevitable and the country would not have been struggling with explanations on the source of funding for road rehabilitation programmes that were being undertaken.

“The people of Zambia must know whether windfall tax is there in inverted commas or not. Can the mining sector come out in the open and tell us what is going on? Why should windfall tax be unpredictable? Dora was on television saying people should not query these projects because the source of funding was the same widely talked about windfall. This does not make sense; there is a lot of insincerity on the part of government,” Chisela said.

He said it was apparent that the government had resorted to reckless borrowing and dubious ways of sourcing money for projects such as road rehabilitation because of their failure to ensure that the country benefits from its God-given natural resources.

Chisela said the country would be plunged into serious debt again if the MMD was not voted out of government.

“For more than two years, President Banda kept on flying but today he is being haunted by trips he made to the extent of resorting to unnecessary borrowing and speedy way of sourcing money to please the electorate,” Chisela said.

“Borrowing can be a good trend if it is done at the right time especially at the beginning of business after it has been planned and not what Rupiah is doing.”

He said the infestation of parastatal companies like Zesco, NAPSA and the violation of tender procedures by the government were the breeding ground for corruption.