The president said he wants ministries to submit revised and scaled down plans that limit spending on travel and new vehicles to what is deemed absolutely necessary as a measure to cut down waste.
“I myself have not added a single new car to my convoy, but continue to use the cars inherited from my predecessor, and I am already scaling down my travel plans for the recovery period, and so I expect every Ministry under my Administration to do the same. And I want to assure all Malawians that since I do not practice wastage of your taxes, I will also not tolerate it from others,” he said.
He added that the office of the Attorney General is working with independent law enforcement agencies to ensure that taxes are not wasted on frivolous claims against the government by businesses whose main trade is inflating prices and extorting the state.
According to Chakwera, the culture of suing the government in the hopes of getting a big payout has only impoverished Malawi as a whole.
“I therefore ask for your support in discouraging this culture, and to instead support a culture of honest business with honest prices from honest contractors.
“In this regard, I must thank the fuel transporters who had previously taken government to court, but have since chosen to settle the matter out of court to save taxpayer resources. Protecting the taxes of Malawians from being wasted is a form of patriotism all of us must support, whether the taxes are those used by the Executive, the Judiciary, or the Legislature,” he said.
The recovery plan which Chakwera presented seeks to expand agriculture production, to support private sector players plying their trade in productive sectors with great export potential and to intensify efforts to vaccinate people in Malawi
The plan further aims to address the effects of the pandemic is the provision and scaling up of fiscal and monetary stimulus towards those productive sectors damaged by Covid-19.
