I choose to be sceptical about austerity measures

Dear judge Mbadwa,

My lord, the narrative from last week has been on sacrifices which the country seem to have made to devalue the currency.

Firstly, the Nyasaland finance minister’s underwhelming statement at a pseudo press briefing that Monday did not help matters at all.

For the obvious reason, my lord, I don’t want to fall into the trap of memorising his mumbo jumbo on strategies drawn to mitigate the effects of devaluation which have since trended. Others have already done justice to that.

His performance that day, however, signaled that we were just excited about making a difficult decision amidst the pressure from the donors without a plan B.

In fact, it cemented my position that we embraced what is termed as “new form of financial colonialism” without doing critical spade work.

My lord, I repeat, we put all our eggs of hope in one International Muzzling Fund (IMF) basket waiting for the IMF to catalyse a deluge of aid flows so that it will be Christmas again for those who care not about the plight of the majority poor Nyasa citizens.

Lazaro was as expected all talk about austerity measures and directives that had to be followed. But I would advise caution on the effectiveness of the recent measures because we have been on this path before, my lord.

When the Nyasaland currency was devalued by 25 percent, the Tokha Are Liars government came up with a set of austerity measures which were never followed at all.

What then makes us believe that this time things will be a little bit different? I choose to wait and see how things will pan out otherwise politicians, especially in Nyasaland, are not better known for keeping words they say during crisis time.

Others have already gone full throttle to call the measures ‘action oriented’, yet history would have cautioned them not to rush into singing praises at this stage.

Those who are calling for additional measures other than those propositional cosmetics are justified because even if the current ones are to be followed to the letter, they won’t bring in any significant change.

The extended credit facility does not necessarily signal to the private sector and international investors that Nyasaland is back on track “as investment friendly economy” as Lazaro claimed.

My lord, I am a patriotic citizen and wish Nyasaland well; hence, would want to encourage investors into the country.

But let us not lie to ourselves that we are back as an investment friendly economy when our policies and the economic environment are still hostile to private investment.

We have slowly been choking the private sector with nothing on the ground to stimulate its growth and meanwhile a number of companies that are struggling continue to increase daily.

My lord, I don’t want to get ahead of myself and join the bandwagon of hand-clappers because I currently don’t think there is a political will to implement austerity measures more so when we are facing the 2025 general elections.

Tisamunamize mzungu apa.

Regards,

John Citizen.

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