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Local News|
Thursday, October 31, 2002 - Web posted at 10:24:25 GMT Opposition sounds a warning on debt HUGH ELLISOPPOSITION 'shadow' finance ministers have called on Government not to allow its debt to balloon in today's Additional Budget. |
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The DTA's Johan de Waal said he hoped debt increases would be kept to a minimum. "We want Government to show it has financial discipline," he told The Namibian, echoing the views of a number of economic analysts. De Waal said there were some "legitimate" reasons for unplanned spending such as drought relief, but he hoped this could be funded from savings from ministries that had underspent. He said it was possible that parastatals could take up the bulk of the additional budget, although such bail-outs should come to an end. "But we must stand up to these people - we cannot continue to support their requests for aid - they will have to become self-sufficient," he said. He said Air Namibia had only recently begun to make a profit, after leasing its Boeing 747, and could still need State assistance. TransNamib and the NBC were also likely candidates for help, he said. On civil servants salaries, De Waal said the country could "perhaps manage an increase for the lower income bracket", but higher-income civil servants were "already very well taken care of". Tsudao Gurirab of the Congress of Democrats (CoD) said more aid for State-owned companies "will not be good news". He said Government should live up to promises on debt reduction made in the medium term expenditure framework, as this would create "predictability" which was good for business. However, he was not optimistic this would be done - much of the framework was, he said, "a joke before the ink had even dried on the document". He said Government needed to increase expenditure on Police and spend most of these new funds on training the Special Field Force (SFF) properly. This, he said, was "an urgent matter". He also called for increases in social spending. This, he proposed, could be funded by cutting defence spending now Namibia's involvement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo had ended. Government should spend State money on social services for the poor, rather than introducing an official lottery to fund such services, as this would give the impression that one could realistically hope to get rich in games of chance. Like De Waal, he called on Government to be restrained in their negotiations with civil servants on wage hikes. |
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