Mundubile objects to UPND plans to sell state assets

IT is ridiculous for the United Party for National Development (UPND) to suggest in their alternative budget that they would sell the residential jet to raise funds for poverty reduction, Government Chief Whip Brian Mundubile has said.

Mr Mundubile charged that such suggestions were a clear indicator that the party was not creative as it claimed to be.

He wondered how a political party that wants to form Government would think that selling a Presidential jet was a solution to reducing poverty in Zambia.

The Chief Whip said this in Parliament when he contributed to the debate on the 2020 National Budget.

“What kind of individuals are these that never get tired of privatising anything that they find in their way, I thought we had learnt our lessons on internal privatisation. You privatised and sold everything along the way and you are still eying.

“Well that plane is not for sale, you will have no opportunity to sell that plane because you will never occupy that seat. Surely how can a Government that wants to take over power in the next two years only have a plan to sell the plane for poverty reduction, where are the brilliant ideas?

“Why not diversify the agriculture sector, why not reform the tourism sector and all the sectors?” Mr Mundubile asked.

He also said the opposition party’s statement that they would reduce tax in their alternative budget was a hoax and that the Zambians should not fall for it.

“When you look at their budget, the proposal is to tax even our poor women that are breaking stones, including every Kaponya on the street.

So when they say they will reduce taxes, they are reducing taxes on the 20 percent of people employed in the formal sector because the informal sector that employs 80 percent will be taxed.

“It’s not that we the Patriotic Front (PF) don’t know about women breaking stones or people washing cars, but we are a Government that is pro-poor. We have deliberately left them out, because we know that it would be indecent and immoral to want to tax them. That is the reason why we have left them out,” he said.

Mr Mundubili said the UPND’s alternative budget had exposed the party’s shallow way of thinking.

He said if truly the opposition party had economic managers as it claimed to have, it would have been seen from the document they produced.

Meanwhile, Mr Mundubile said the 2020 National Budget presented by Finance Minister Bwalya Ng’andu was superior to the UPND’s alternative budget.

He described the budget as balanced and responsive to the challenges that the country was facing.

“It’s common cause that the Zambian economy is going through turbulent phase on a number of issues, the Minister of Finance took cognisant of all the factors when he was preparing the budget.

When you are in a turbulent state, the first thing you do is to stabilise the situation and this is what the Minister has done, in his budget, he made sure all key sectors remained stable,” he said.