By Patson Chilemba
Former Finance minister Ng’andu Magande has described as bold the K173 national budget, that he says carries with it matters that have never been done before.
In his brief analysis of the 2021 National budget presented by Finance minister Dr Situmbeko Musokotwane yesterday, Magande said the budget had pronounced several bold decisions which had never been done by previous administrations, including the MMD government he served under.
He cited aspects such as the increased Constituency Development Fund (CDF) from K1.6 billion per constituency to K25.7 billion per constituency, and the recruitment of 30,000 teachers and 11,200 health workers.
“During my time we also had CDF, where we would give constituencies like K100, 000. But what can you do with that…if someone who does something that has never been done before, that is a bold. Definitely it will create employment. (And) nobody had the courage to ban the importation of desks,” Magande said in an interview with Daily Revelation.
The former finance minister said the budget had included a lot of things, which if people participated the country will take steps forward, as it encouraged decentralisation. He said decentralisation has been problematic since the country attained independence as the late founding father Dr Kenneth Kaunda tried with development centres and village committees where all the villagers were registered to participate in development.
“The inclusion of CDF it was a good idea because you are cutting the country to pieces, but what I think was a problem with the CDF (in the past) was the supervision of these CDF. They were misapplied,” Magande said. “When the old man Sata came he said ‘I want to have smaller districts’, but people had no tools to take development there. So I think UPND was watching that ‘yes, we want decentralisation’, but now we are going to give people tools, to get people involved in developing themselves.”
Magande said people will now have little incentive to go to the media to complain about various developmental matters in their localities, as members of parliaments and councillors have now been given added responsibility to answer to the people’s demands.
He emphasised the importance of establishing supervisory structures on the planning and execution of the CDF.
On questions regarding the execution of the budget which several stakeholders have raised, Magande said the fact that only K1.6 billion was needed to recruit 30,000 teachers simply meant that there were problems in the management of resources previously.
He said the country borrowed a lot of money which in many ways was not properly utilised, saying that was probably the more reason why money was being found in people’s houses.
Magande said the announcement in rearranging mining taxes for instance, where the mines will now only be taxed once will result in a boom in revenues from copper mining, whose prices he said are already high on the International market, including plans to open up new mines, and that this will in turn increase revenues for the country to finance social issues.
He urged the youths to find space in the development of the country, and that the newly recruited teachers must teach the youths in life skills as opposed to teaching them on how to surf the internet for unproductive purposes, but that if it is to surf the internet it should be to search on how they could access the tools to engage in development.
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