Thank God I am back, says Musokotwane
By Kombe Chimpinde Mataka
FINANCE minister Situmbeko Musokotwane says fuel price increase after the reinstatement of VAT and excise duty is not as high as people anticipated.
On Nansanga Farming Block which he began under the Rupiah Banda regime, he said “if I had been there Nansanga would have been a different story altogether. So thank God I am back. Now we have the money”.
Speaking when he featured on ZNBC’s Sunday Interview, Dr Musokotwane, who on
Friday proposed unveiled a K167.3 billion 2023 budget, said fuel would only hit the K28 or K30 mark if there is an increase on the
international market and not because of the VAT and excise duty.
“Yes this is the fear but I must also say that you have seen that the increase is not like what people said. There are people who were
saying the price of diesel and petrol will go to K28, some were even saying K30. Has it gone to that? No it has not,” he said. “If it goes up, it will not be because of taxes. It will be because where the oil is coming from the prices have gone up. Some people are
saying the customs duty is going to come on this. There will be customs duty. There are only two taxes – Value Added Tax and the Excise Tax and as you can see the increase is far away from what people were saying.”
Dr Musokotwane said the taxes the government was collecting from Zambians
would be put to good use.
“All these things that we have talked about, providing support to our aged in the rural areas, the [social] cash transfer, the issue of paying for school children up to grade 12, the issue of pushing more money into the rural areas, it is this money and of course other sources. So yes we are paying taxes but this government is not using this money for flamboyant expenses. We are getting money from you like what we do in cooperatives. But then we give it back to you so that we can send our children to school, we can have water, the classrooms. So it is our money that is working. The money we are paying on fuel taxes,” he said.
And Dr Musokotwane said the removal of meal allowances by the PF was unfortunate.
“I know some of the children who are coming out of these rural constituencies from very poor families that sometimes can even hardly
afford to feed themselves. So if a child like that comes to Lusaka, especially a girl child, and you say ‘we will just give you tuition,
but food feed yourself’ what are you saying?’ My dream, our dream is that as the economy begins to pick up more jobs will be created. Then we can have a situation like what we see in other countries where students during their spare time, they can go and wash dishes in the restaurants. They can be waiters, they can be salespeople in shops. We have seen this with universities abroad where we were studying,” he said. “The loans under the loan scheme also is increased. So we have done both but it was also necessary to do this.”
Dr Musokotwane said the government would generate the money to fund the budget within the budget.
“This is not magical money falling from somewhere. These are part of the budget. So contrary to those who were saying that with IMF in place we will not be able to hire teachers, we will not be allowed to hire nurses, we have hired them. We will not be allowed to provide bursaries to children, we are doing so,” he said.
Dr Musokotwane however said the government would borrow “soft loans”.
“Borrowing is a continuous process but what we are saying is you cannot stop abruptly. For example, these projects that are close to
completion what will be the logic in stopping them if we can still borrow a little bit of money? So those must continue. That means of course that the borrowing must increase. Now these new loans that we are getting, they differ from the ones that were acquired before in the sense that these are concessional loans. Concessional means they are on softer terms. Typical loan that you get now; there is a grace period of five years. In other words, you don’t pay anything for five years when you acquire the debt then the interest rate is very low. Sometimes half a per cent. In some cases zero per cent like the money that we getting from IMF, there is no interest on it as well. Then the repayment is long term,” he said.
Dr Musokotwane said he was happy that after the slackened progress of Nansanga
Farming Block which he began under the Rupiah Banda regime, would now be revamped including many others which the government plans to open up.
“If I had been there Nansanga would have been a different story altogether. So thank God I am back. Now we have the money and $300 million. So already we are looking at various places together with the Minister of Agriculture [Reuben Mtolo Phiri] and by the way this is not only an agriculture issue. A number of ministries will be involved. The Minister of Energy [Peter Kapala] must come and seen how he is going to provide power in this area,” he said. “The Minister of Infrastructure [Charles Milupi] must come in and see how we are going to plan the roads in these farm blocks. The Minister of Water [Mike Mposha] must come in. Communication comes in, even education and health. We are talking at creating new towns based on agriculture.”