Crunch it up
You should love some professions. Imagine making quick bucks for simply writing somebody’s Will before they meet their maker. The business of life insurance for instance is all about inheritance, never mind the jargon. In fact, every day we are doing something to ensure someone inherits fruits of our labour. For the lazy mind, inheriting wealth is an easy option.
As they say, there are many ways of becoming rich. You can win a game changing lottery. You can simply inherit your parents’ wealth. Similarly, you can be a shrewd investor of the Buffer pedigree. On a controversial note, you can also be a successful criminal. There are simply many ways and we can make choices.
What we do sometimes may sum up to what an entire country looks like. A country can have sophisticated criminal elements that abuse public taxes, leading into poverty or depletion of wealth. It can also have sophisticated systems of transparency and governance that secures the wealth of a nation. Again, it is a collection of individual decisions through the ballot box.
As we enter the last month of the first quarter of the budget , my mind is fixated on what outcomes to expect in June. Like others, I tend to reflect on the last 51 years and whether after some rebooting, the republic is on course.
Are we getting there? One tough occurrence has been the kwacha on its perennial dance floor. We have all noticed but there are others that must see a wider picture. I mean those that raise their arms or open their mouths to yell some ‘yes‘ to pass a vote. Are we on course to have more days with electricity, especially that our drive to attract more foreign investors seems to be in smooth groove. The same questions of infrastructure that this column is so obsessed with seems to have started well though one wonders when old projects such as Jali-Phalombe or Mzimba-Mzalangwe roads have been under construction for close to a decade. Then there is this creativity of balancing books through the road traffic that has seen chaotic scenes as motorists try to get this card. There is a lot productivity that is lost. Maybe someone has to rethink how to fix this.
This quarter is quite interesting, as like many other days, I think about how wealth is being created or lost for our next decades of living. Each day is linked to the past or yesterday, whatever you want to call it. I again think about what wealth we are creating each and every year. There is simply much to talk about. What this country will look like in next 51 years depends on what we are doing now. It depends on the wealth we are creating for our own. It will depend also on how we safeguard it to zombies and other forces of malignancy.
For the past half century, budgets come and get presented. Our lawmakers deliberated and the budget was passed.
One clever mind would be asking whether a healthy nation is being bred and whether signs of such are visible in the first quarter of the budget cycle. In the tyranny numbers, we got ourselves to understand why referral hospitals are crumbling and failing to cope. The recent Primary School Leaving Certification Education (PSLCE) and Junior Certification Examination (JCE) results tell us a story of how many young women and men will need university or college places in two or four years. I would be looking at this demographic divide whenever I wake up and try to clean my mouth as I count the days. Yes, I mean future capital that is beehive of wealth creation.
Crunch it up. It is the right quarter of the budget year. n
