PSP heartbroken by 2015 national budget

Platform for Social Protection (PSP) Zambia has observed that the 2015 National Budget is its major heartbreak for the country’s social protection.

PSP country Director Mutale Wakunuma has told Qfm News that one of the fundamental considerations in its assessment of the national budget of his organization is how equitable the budget really is.

Ms. Wakunuma says Equity can be assessed by the extent to which the government has attempted to guarantee a fair and just redistribution of the national wealth to all its citizens without exception.

Ms. Wakunuma stresses that this entails therefore that a budget should be used to ensure enhanced access to basic social and economic services for all in society.

Ms. Wakunuma notes that in the budget speech illustrated table of expenditure by function, it is clear that over two thirds or 65 percent of the budget goes towards non social spending.

Ms. Wakunuma says this implies that overall assessment of the budget shows that the budget for 2015 is not equitable and does not promise to reduce poverty for the majority Zambians.

She adds that this should be understood in the context of the situation of poverty in Zambia, standing stuck at 60.5 percent as well as the fact that Zambia signed up to the Millennium Development Goals, whose first goal was to reduce hunger and poverty by at least half by 2015.