By KETRA KALUNGA
THE theft, misuse, and abuse of finance that the United Party For National Development (UPND) condemned while in the opposition is likely to continue going forward because the system for managing public funds is not in place due to the absence of permanent secretaries, says Economist Yusuf Dodia.
Mr. Dodia said in an interview that with the increased allocation of the Constituency Development Funds (CDF) from K1.6 million to K25.7 million, the chances of public funds being misappropriated are high because the government is operating without permanent secretaries who are controlling officers. He said the government should quickly appoint permanent secretaries because it’s unacceptable that politicians appointed as ministers are running ministries on behalf of the government in the absence of permanent secretaries. “The government is being run by ministers because there are no permanent secretaries which means you have politicians who shouted slogans during the election campaigns now becoming heads of ministries trying to run the ministries on behalf of the government and that is just unacceptable,” he said.
Mr. Dodia said it is worrying that the UPND administration is putting so much power in the hands of the government machinery but the government machinery itself is not set up in a way to be able to deliver on the promises of the 2022 national budget. And Mr. Dodia described the 2022 budget presentation as ambitious because although an increase of about 45 percent on allocation to different economic activities sounds good, it would be difficult for the country to raise the extra billion money given that the economy has not done well.
“I thought it was an ambitious budget because the 2021 national budget is a K119 billion, the 2022 budget is K193 billion that is an increase of 45 percent and an increase of 45 percent it sounds very very good on the expenditure side, “But on the revenue that is where my concern is, how do we raise that extra billion Kwacha from K119.6 billion to K173 billion and given that the economy has not done that well which the finance minister himself alluded to because of the impact of the Covid pandemic and that the debt situation has worsened in the last few months,” Mr Dodia said.
