Civil Society Education Coalition (CSEC) has called on government to implement progressive tax reforms in order to increase the size of the overall national budget and as a result raise the education budget.
CSEC Board Chairperson Limbani Nsapato made the statement during a press briefing which the organization conducted on Wednesday in Lilongwe.
Speaking with reporters, Nsapato said government should increase tax -to-Gross National Product (GDP) ratio through progressive tax reform.
He added that CSESC and its partners believe that the only practical and realistic way for Malawi to deal with the competing pressures on government budget is to maximize the revenue available by building progressive and expanded domestic systems of taxation, reviewing tax and royalty agreements in the corporate sector and closing loopholes through which Malawi loses billions of Malawian Kwacha a year.
“Subsequently, increasing the overall education budget should result into increased funding for inclusive education and other sub-sectors within the ministry of education,” he explained.
On issue of debt, Nsapato said that countries such as Malawi which spend more on debt servicing than on education should be in front of the queue for debt cancellation or renegotiations because the allocation of domestic financial resources to pay debt servicing will continue to impair the economic capacity of the country if no urgent action to alleviate or cancel debt is taken .
He went on to say that the Ministry of Finance should see education as investment not consumption and urged World Bank and other international financial institutions to remove existing austerity measures, recommendations and obstacles such as public sector wage constraints and champion policies that will always facilitate recruitment of professional teachers wherever there are shortages, more specifically specialist teachers.
The 2023/24 budget allocation for education in Malawi is K638 Billion which represents 16% of the national budget and 4.1 % of the gross domestic product.
The country has a debt of about K8 trillion.
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