Minister for expenditure control in mid-term budget

Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs Simplex Chithyola Banda intends to focus on introducing expenditure controls during the forthcoming mid-term budget review so as to win back the lost budgetary support.

According to a communication from the Speaker of the National Assembly Catherine Gotani Hara, members of Parliament are expected to meet for the Mid Year Budget Review Meeting from November 13 to December 8 2023.

Asked recently as to what changes he would bring to the budget, Chityhola Banda said at the moment, the country needs to observe fiscal discipline so that there is value for money spent on every activity that would involve public expenditure.

He said: “Key to this is how we convince our development partners to come and start giving us budgetary support. That can only be done if they see that we are practising fiscal discipline, and that is one of the key issues that I want to see when we meet during the mid-term budget review.”

Parliament passed the K3.788 trillion 2023-24 National Budget on March 31 2023 which was presented in Parliament by the then Minister of Finance and Economic Development Sosten Gwengwe.

Meanwhile, Banda who swapped posts with Gwengwe, has introduced what he calls the 4F strategy that he believes would stabilise the country’s economy. These are forex, fuel, food and fertiliser shortages that he said once addressed, the economy would be stabilised.

“The four Fs that are crippling our economy now are forex, fuel, food and fertiliser [shortage]. These are the issues that if we address them now, then we will be able to stabalise our economy,” he said last week on the sidelines of his visit to the Malawi Revenue Authority offices in Blantyre.

Nevertheless the Finance minister said he was also working on diversifying economic activities to maximise revenue collection.

Speaking when he commissioned a water supply project in Mangochi on October 12 2023, President Lazarus Chakwera disclosed that he had appointed Banda to be the Finance Minister to implement “the public spending reconfiguration” exercise to maximise limited resources the country has.

Said Chakwera: “As government, we are already gearing up to reconfigure our focus areas for public spending to ensure that the limited resources  we have are going towards priority areas that have the most economic and productive impact and not wasted on consumption.”

Malawi has been struggling with unsustainable debts with several calls to international debtors to consider cancelling or restructuring the repayment.