Parliament passes revised national budget
Parliament yesterday passed the K4.3 trillion 2023/24 revised National Budget within two hours after the convening of the Committee of Supply, a session where legislators scrutinise vote by vote.
Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs Simplex Chithyola Banda hailed the passage of the budget in record time as a demonstration of the confidence the House has in Treasury and the country’s leadership.
He said: “It is not easy to pass a budget within two hours after the Committee of Supply has convened. But I think we were able to explain during the budget debate to members, and they saw it fit that they needed not to waste time, but to pass it because a budget is the law that helps run this country for us to spend and use the money on things that we have planned.”
In the revised budget, the biggest loser was the Department of Human Resource Management and Development which had a cut of K103 billion from K109.2 billion to K6.3 billion.
The magnitude of the reduction moved Thyolo South legislator Sandram Scott to question why was the case.
But in his explanation, Chithyola Banda said the salaries from the department have been allocated to the ministries; hence, the reduction.
Democratic Progressive Party spokesperson on finance Ralph Jooma in an interview yesterday said the budget has increased by K500 billion due to devaluation.
“However, we were not very happy that a number of votes have had their other recurrent transactions reduced which means that many offices are not going to operate freely and will not even manage to achieve the programmes and projects that they lined up,” he said.
Jooma said there should be a balance between allocations for the projects and allocations for the implementation of that project.
“So, we hope that our civil servants and other officers who are going to implement the budget will find this in order and that under the austerity measures they will ensure that the programmes are implemented,” he said.
Other votes that have seen significant reductions include the Directorate of Public Officers’ Declarations whose budget has been reduced by about K40 million and Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs whose allocation has been reduced by K4.2 billion from K15.2 billion to K11 billion.
The Ministry of Local Government, Unity and Culture’s budget was also trimmed to K18.9 billion from K19.3 billion.
On the other hand, winners were the National Assembly whose revised budget moved from K34.7 billion to K38.1 billion, Independent Complaints Commission (ICC) got K701 million from K653 million and Office of the President and Cabinet got K23 billion from K19.8 billion.
On the other hand, the Roads Fund Administration saw its budget revised from K138.8 billion to K145.6 billion.
In his Mid-Year Budget Review Statement delivered in Parliament on November 20 2023, the minister adjusted expenditures by K540 billion to K4.33 trillion.
The 14.2 percent increase on the initial K3.79 trillion fiscal plan implemented from April 1 this year was largely meant to accommodate the social protection measures the Malawi Government seeks to implement to cushion vulnerable sections of the population from the impact of the 44 percent kwacha devaluation.
