2018 National Budget a ‘deficit’ budget – Shimunza

Daniel Shimunza – MNT President

Movement for National Transformation (MNT) president Daniel Shimunza has described the 2018 national budget as a deficit budget with limited resources to finance the proposed expenditure therein.

Mr. Shimunza says the mistake is that to mobilise revenue, government has decided to increase taxes, rather than reduce expenditure by growing the macro-economic factors of production

He states that the budget has protected multi-national corporations with foreign direct investments (FDI) and capital by not taxing them as they should.

Mr Shimunza  notes that the budget may not meet the pillars embedded in the 7^th National Development Plan (7NDP) because of transactional leadership approaches to meet the required economic stabilization monetary policy which must be aligned to government’s fiscal consolidation measures which may compromise inflation, especially growth objectives.