Finance Minister Simplex Chithyola Banda is Friday expected to wind up debate on the mid-year budget review statement he presented in Parliament Monday last week.
Leader of the House Richard Chimwendo Banda disclosed this in Parliament at the end of Thursday’s meeting.
The revised budget is pegged at K4.33 trillion from K3.89 trillion.
Over the past 10 days, the lawmakers have been giving their views on the budget review statement.
During the debate, lawmakers appealed to Treasury to consider increasing allocations towards “crucial areas” such as the Affordable Inputs Programme and food security, among others.
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Among others, the Democratic Progressive Party, through its spokesperson on finance, Ralph Jooma, described the K540 billion jump in the total budget as fair but questioned the significant cuts in Other Recurrent Budgets of crucial ministries, departments and agencies.
UDF spokesperson on finance Ismail Mkumba said life was already difficult, but it is getting even more difficult for the ordinary Malawian due to the recent 44 percent devaluation.
According to Mkumba, Malawians are getting poorer with each passing day, struggling to afford daily essentials such as sugar, cooking oil, milk, salt and chicken.
“It has become much cheaper to run a small private vehicle than it is to travel by public transport,” Mkumba said.
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In his contribution to the budget review statement, Kasungu Central Member of Parliament, Ken Kandodo, said Malawi needs to have a critical review of its National Export Strategy to make sure that it delivers the desired result.
The former finance minister said since a third of Malawi’s area is covered by water, it could be ideal for the country to invest much energy in fisheries.
Lilongwe South lawmaker Peter Dimba argued that Malawi is in the economic mess by choice.
Dimba said the people of Malawi have chosen not to grow the economy.
“Prosperity, growth or success is by choice. It is not by default. It is something that is born out of intentionality. You make an intention to prosper or to do well and over the past 30 years, we haven’t shown that seriousness for us to grow and prosper as a nation,” Dimba said.
The House is expected to enter into Committee of Supply next week, where lawmakers are expected to scrutinise the revised budget vote by vote.
