Africa-Press – Malawi. Parliament Monday passed the revised K2.852 trillion 2022-23 national budget. On November 25, Finance Minister Sosten Gwengwe presented the revised K2.85 trillion budget, up from the K2.84 trillion presented in February this year.
Monday, lawmakers passed the financial plan with a single change to the Parliament vote, which has gone up by K2.6 billion to cater for the next meeting of the august House. On one hand, the budget has seen significant cuts to crucial ministries of Tourism, Trade, Labour, Transport and Gender, among others.
On the other hand, parliamentarians have added financial resources to State residences, Office of President and Cabinet, Anti-Corruption Bureau, Malawi Police Service, the Ministry of Forestry and others.
In an interview Monday, Gwengwe justified budget cuts to some of the productive sectors, saying the sectors could not absorb resources in the remaining months of the fiscal year, prompting the government to shift the resources to areas where they are most needed.
“When you look at consumption, you will be talking of things like salaries. There is no way you can reduce the salary of an employee. You just have to provide for that salary because people will need a salary at the end of the day.
“Then we have projects such as the Special Economic Zones initiative under the Ministry of Trade, where we would like to have [places like] Magwelo, the Matindi [areas of this world] developed. Not much traction over the past months and we had allocated about a billion [Kwacha] to the project. The money won’t be absorbed in the next two to three months. So it will be like we are cutting the development budget but it’s about absorption; it’s about the speed in executing some of these projects,” Gwengwe said.
He observed that, where projects are not executed with speed, the money cannot just stay idle in Account Number One but will have to be channeled somewhere.
Budget and Finance Committee of Parliament Chairperson Gladys Ganda expressed hope that government ministries, departments and agencies will put the financial resources to good use.
She, however, questioned the incorporation of recruitment budgets that come mid-year, saying the government should bring such requests in the main budget and not in the middle of the budget.
“Recruitment is a big thing. You can’t just dream about it in the middle of the budget,” Ganda said.
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