GOVERNMENT LYING THROUGH ERB
By: Mutotwe Kafwaya
I have found it extremely unfortunate for government to lie that it had a strategic reserve fund which was applied to keep fuel prices constant for the last four months.
Firstly I am distraught because government has been emphatic in stating that they have removed subsidies from petroleum products and services since the introduction of monthly price reviews. At no point has government ever revealed to us that they had reintroduced subsidies to the sector. But only to come and tell us after the fund has been exhausted.
This is deception of the highest order.
ERB has been maintaining fuel prices for a few months now, without justifying why those prices have remained constant even though the price of the dollar has been going up on a daily basis. Suddenly ERB comes out today and says there has been a subsidy – this is very embarrassing on the part of government for misleading the public that subsidies have been removed.
How embarrassing must it get for government to stop lying?
Well; after reading the revelation from the ERB chairperson Mr Reynolds Bowa that ERB has exhausted the strategic reserve fund which they used as a subsidy on fuel I straight away went to peruse the national budget for 2023 to locate where this strategic reserve fund is.
Observing that ERB is under the ministry of energy, I went straight to Head 62 which is on page 593 to 608 of the yellow book. And I further perused for the same Head 62 in the Supplementary Estimates of Expenditure No. 1 of 2023. I found Head 62 on page 24 of the Supplementary budget.
To my utter shock, none of these documents contained a strategic reserve fund on these relevant locations inside of the books. And I concluded that government cheated again by saying there was a strategic reserve fund, unless this fund is maintained outside of the budget system which would be completely illegal.
In the interest of the much publicized accountability and transparency, I challenge government to indicate where the strategic reserve fund is contained in the 2023 budget. If government used a different Head or Program altogether, it would be important to state accordingly, so that people are aware of the source of this hidden subsidy.
My conclusion is that government issued that statement from the board chairperson of ERB to psychologically prepare the people for a leap in fuel prices this month end. I say so because this is the begging of the 2024 national budget. And reserves are usually made at the end of the year and applied in subsequent years. As such it is illogical for government to apply a reserve at the end of the year and not the beginning of the subsequent year. In any case, government operates on an income and expenditure basis – there this reserve rhetoric is completely irrelevant but just brought in to mislead us.
If there were subsidies on fuel and yet government was saying there are no subsidies, on how many things have we been cheated? I now understand why it has been necessary for this government to maintain an illegal auditor – maybe this is the only auditor without capacity to pick such matters of national significance.
Restoring EVERYTHING PATRIOTIC.
MK22.01.2024
