By BUUMBA CHIMBULU
THE Consumer Unity and Trust Society (CUTS) is worried that the cost of living will rise and has called on Government to provide a more systematic approach on how revenue generation will be handled without necessarily burdening individuals in the formal sector of employment.
This idea that an individual had to be paying more than the corporate was concerning for the Civil Society Organisations, CUTS centre Director Claudia Pollen said in Chisamba recently.
Speaking at the Budget Listening-in and Analysis consultation meeting, Dr Pollen said Pay-As- You-Earn (PAYE) had remained the same in the 2022 National Budget.
She said obviously the Ministry of Finance was expecting to tax the same group of people, who would also contribute to this resource mobilization strategy.
“We think this is going to be quiet unfair when it comes to thinking of the cost of living at this rate it doesn’t look like the cost of living is going to come down… it is going go higher we still have our debt obligations,” Dr Pollen said.
She said it was important for the Minister of Finance to provide guidance on how revenue generation would be handled without necessarily burdening the individuals in the formal sector of employment.
She was however optimistic that the revenue collection mechanism would be enhanced.
She said the social sector expenditure had been increased but the biggest challenges the country had been facing was institutional failure in terms of making sure that these pronouncements leads to implementation in practice.
Generally, Dr Pollen said it was a positive budget in terms of looking at the different sectors of the economy but there are some concerns when it comes to mineral royalty tax.
Dr Pollen said they await from Government a clear strategy on how it would approach some of these increments.
