Parliament has adopted the K4.3 2023/2024 mid-year budget to be appropriated to the consolidated recurrent and development accounts for the purpose set out in the revised recurrent and development estimates.

The lawmakers passed the budget yesterday after scrutinising vote by vote allocated to various Ministries, Departments and Agencies through the Committee of Supply.

Speaking to YFM after the session, Finance Minister Simplex Chithyola-Banda said the smooth passing of the revised budget, which took within two hours, is an apparent indication of confidence that the august House has in the country’s leadership.

“We did not receive many questions because basically members were in agreement to what we propose as revision to each and every vote so I’m very thankful for their support and this has given me more energy to soldier on as we move towards rebuilding and recovering our economy.

The degree of confidence in the ministry of finance but also, I think the degree of confidence in the leadership of the country, it’s not easy to pass a budget within two hours, but I think we were able to explain during the budget debate to members and they saw it fit that they need not to waste time but to pass the budget,” said the finance minister.

Commenting on the development, the main opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) says it is optimistic that government will run its affairs in accordance with the constituted austerity measures.

“We believe ourselves that we should balance between allocation to the actual project in allocation for the implementation of that project, the running expenses, the fuel, the travel, the monitoring, all those have to be budgeted for very well.

“So, we just hope that our civil servants the officers who are going to implement this budget will find this in order under the under the austerity measures, they will still make sure that the programmes and projects are implemented,” said Ralph Jooma, DPP’s spokesperson on finance.