LILONGWE-(MaraviPost)-Malawi’s economic recovery is still a significant challenge, according to the United Democratic Front (UDF), acknowledging the nation’s deep suffering.
UDF Spokesperson Ismail Mkumba made the remarks in the August House in response to the Finance Minister Simplex Chithyola’s budget statement.
Mkumba reported that UDF has identified significant problems with the 2025-2026 fiscal year budget’s emphasis on ‘Consolidating Gains, Strengthening Resilience, and Inclusivity for Accelerated Social Economic Transformation’ with apprehension.
He said the party is not convinced that the economic transformation characterized by a 3.2% growth rate will be achievable.
Mkumba added that the estimated inflation rate of 24% from the current 32.3% is rather unrealistic given the current high food inflation rate and an uncontrollable pricing regime which has held hard working Malawians at ransom.
The legislator stated that they have taken note that the National Budget makes recurring incorrect assumptions about economic growth rates year after year, which has also been acknowledged by the Minister in his Budget Statement.
“We are not convinced that the economic transformation characterized by a 3.2% growth rate will be attainable due to foreign exchange imbalances, unrealistic borrowing, and overreliance on foreign aid, among others,” said Mkumba.
He expressed concern about the prolonged imbalance of foreign exchange reserves as a result of the limited capacity to export high-value goods and services.
Mkumba therefore lauded the latest measures taken by the Minister of Trade and Industry, Vitumbiko Mumbo, through the Prohibition Order of 2025 to reduce imports of products that can be produced locally.
The UDF feels that local producers have neither been equipped nor encouraged to meet the growing local demand for foreign goods and services, thereby endangering the very local consumers and industries that the government is trying to protect.
He therefore said overreliance on foreign sources to finance our development expenditure puts our budget in jeopardy questioning independent attained in 1964 as we continue to rely on donors instead of developing mechanisms to finance the development of this sovereign estate through a surplus budget.
In his remarks, Democratic Progressive Party, (DPP) Finance Spokesperson,Ben Phiri said 2025- 2026 budget is a pack of lies and is a heap of senseless fiscal promises that will again not be delivered.
Phiri said MCP wishes to continue with its fiscal deceit and budget hypocrisy.
He adds that 20025-2026 Budget has an economic context of MCP’s broken promises and lies as Malawians were told by MCP that the economy would improve within 2 years.
“since June 2020, DPP has been providing constructive advice on how to manage the economy, but sadly the MCP chose not to listen, it opted to run the economy in their own MCP way, they deployed the new economic theory called SOSISA which was and I believe shall remain the most meaningless theory,”said Phiri.
He therefore the national budgets are also failing because MCP is making people borrow money from commercial banks at high interest rates with Reseve Bank policy rate of 26%.
