Chilima defends DPP’s ambitious agenda

Malawi’s Vice President Saulos Chilima has defended the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP)’s ambitious agenda that critics say is unrealistic, but which he says is achievable.

Chilima, in an e-mail response last week, said the package of projects that President Peter Mutharika announced in his inaugural address will be phased over the five-year electoral mandate.

The projects will lay the critical foundations for a sustainable development path for the years beyond, according to Chilima.

In his inaugural speech, President Mutharika, among other things, said his government will continue with the Farm Input Subsidy Programme (Fisp) whose cost to the economy has ranged from six percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to 16 percent between 2006 and 2013.

He also committed to introduce new subsidies on cement and iron sheets, open community colleges nationwide, build the universities that the late Bingu wa Mutharika conceptualised and complete the Shire Zambezi Waterway Project that would also turn Nsanje District into a city.

But economic and political observers said in separate interviews last week that with donors recoiling and the economy in tatters, the DPP administration cannot raise the funds needed to execute such an expansive and expensive agenda,

University of Malawi’s Chancellor College political science lecturer Boniface Dulani said subsidies have not helped Malawi over the past years and that it has deprived government of money that should have been used to provide essential services in sections such as health and education.

“It is true that there are people that need help in the country, [but] the best way is to create jobs so that people can earn enough to buy food, iron sheets and cement,” he said.

In an e-mail response, economic analyst James Chikavu Nyirenda observed that the Fisp programme has already been heavily criticised as a mere political tool that only serves to ultimately enrich party or party-related business people.

“Its effectiveness as a sustainable programme is doubtful as evidenced by the fact that Malawi is still not food self-sufficient despite billions of kwachas being spent over the past nine years. I believe that the Green Belt Initiative is a more effective project that will create employment, enable adoption of best practices, improve production and productivity and be better managed under a workable Public/Private Partnership [PPP] arrangement.

“All in all, Malawi’s resource envelope is not sufficient to fund these programmes in the medium term and it will take some creative financial engineering, partnerships and co-operation with international partners and the private sector to pull these programmes off successfully, especially against the background of insufficient or no donor aid,” he observed

On his part, Chancellor College political analyst Blessings Chinsinga—who has published studies on subsidies in Malawi—said in another interview that subsidies on their own are not bad but, he explained, it is the design of the subsidised projects that is problematic.