I thought the proposals should be in line with what the government had announced. But some are completely unwelcome.
I heard that they are going to remove some exceptions which are mostly on essential commodities, and then it will affect the poor who are supposed to be cushioned.
My view is that the government has not come out consciously and properly organized in terms of what they want to do. There is need for clarity on what the government wants to achieve.
There is a need for the government to project the actual projected expenditure as a result of this Covid-19.
If for instance, if we are going to have 10,000 (Covid-19) cases by the end of April, how much is it going to cost us as an economy to manage that health and economic crisis? That is not coming out in terms of figures and finances.
Then we get to ask where we are getting that money. Yes, we got some money from the Emergency Fund, but going forward we cannot rely on philanthropy.
We must provide budgetary allocation, we must clearly indicate through a supplementary budget which is coming next week, I would want to see where the money is coming from and going to.
These tax proposals we must be interrogated if we are reducing VAT to 14 per cent which is a modest reduction from 16 per cent to 14 per cent, the two per cent is not very significant but it is better than nothing.
Let us not again interfere with other existing tax reliefs which were already cushioning or helping reduce the burden on the ordinary mwananchi.
If they are introducing that (burdening the poor) would hurt the economy, in my view then what are we doing? Are we not being counterproductive?
In my view, I don’t think we have come out with concrete measures that are going to help stimulate our economy or avoid us going into recession.
As a country, there are certain things we would have done especially how we are dealing with Small Business Enterprises (SMEs) which are the biggest contributors to our economy.
The proposals we have we are looking at, how effectively are they going to cushion our SMEs.
We need a stimulus package that will give the SMEs some impetus.
The National Assembly Minority leader spoke to the Star
