Malawi budget funding wrong things—Chikaonda
Press Corporation Limited (PCL) group chief executive officer Matthews Chikaonda says it is time for Malawi to rethink its priorities because the national budget is mostly funding ‘wrong things’.
Chikaonda—who once served as Minister of Finance and Economic Planning and Development and governor of the Reserve Bank of Malawi in the Bakili Muluzi regime—said this on Tuesday in Blantyre in his contribution to a presentation by Vice-President Saulos Chilima on the progress of the Public Service Reforms Commission to the private sector.
He noted that currently the budget is designed more on funding people who can afford.
Said Chikaonda: “We have exclusive expenditures. These ones are those that do not benefit society, they benefit the individual who needs the service. For instance, if I need a passport, that is exclusively for my benefit. Should government share with me the cost of paying for it?
“Then we have shared expenditures. These ones are those that benefit society. For instance, training a doctor or a teacher. When such people graduate they help the society. Surely, government needs to share with the public in training such people. What matters is the extent of sharing.”
He further said that, as a country, Malawi needs to have a budget that should not fund who can help themselves.
Commenting on the commission’s recommendation for the need to relaunch the Vision 2020, Chikaonda, while agreeing with it, advanced that in the first place Malawi need to agree on guiding principles especially on how to conduct business.
“Going forward will be difficult to implement without an agreement on fundamental. Again, when we develop activities in this plan, let’s not forget to make sure that every activity has minimum resources to help in the implementation. A decision to underfund is a decision to fail,” he said.
As he was making his comments, Chilima was seen listening attentively and sometimes taking notes.
In his remarks, Chilima hailed the private sector for heeding the call.
“It is not the duty of government to do business. It is the duty of the private sector to do that. We are here to discuss what we have found out so that we do not leave anybody behind in this reform process,” he said.
On the private sector, the Commision’s released reports on what has been achieved so far highlights that it will continue to engage with various stakeholders by conducting meetings with the private sector.
“It was hoped that through such engagement, the Commission would be able to attract financial support from the private sector in the implementation of certain reform programmes. This approach is in recognition of the fact that Government cannot implement the reform process single-handed but has to establish partnerships with the private sector,” reads the report.
As far i respect Mathews Chikaonda i find his thinking mismatched. His principle has been to deny the middle class or well to do Malawians to social service proposing full payment by the social class. However, he has overtime also denied programmes that can help the lower class attain services that can push then to middle class level. Chikaonda needs to balance his line of thinking. I remember during Muluzi time he mockingly raised the university fees saying it is a luxury whilst knowing dening the fact that higher education is part of the important remedy for our economy. When he was called at Chancellor College and Quizzed about it, he blindly said even a primary teacher could afford to pay for university fees. But that time a primary teacher was receiving about MK8,000+ and university fee was raised to MK25,000. I wondered how his professorship failed to be tied to reality on the ground. As if not enough he supported increase in insurance for motor vehicle. I still asked how viable was transport business in Malawi that one could afford to pay for vehicle maintenance services at that cost and at the same time realise profits. There is more Chikaonda has to learn, possibly he hurried in pursuit for his higher education before attaining vast experince that could necessitate him be called economic genius