Budget meant to appease colonialists – SP
By Mast Reporter
THE 2026 national budget recently unveiled by the United Party for National Development (UPND) government is not meant to benefit Zambians but aimed at impressing its colonial masters, the Socialist Party (SP) has said.
SP general secretary Dr Cosmas Musumli says the K253.1 billion national budget for 2026 is far from offering hope to the Zambian masses that their livelihoods will be any better than over the last four years of the UPND’s incompetence and misrule.
“As things stand, and typical of the UPND, the 2026 budget is meant to impress our colonial masters – not the Zambian masses that they pay cheap political lip services to but inherently despise with their actions,” Dr Musumali says in his budget analysis article published by The Mast on page 6 today.
He says the UPND has become a liability to the people of Zambia.
Dr Musumali wonders why the UPND government is celebrating what it is calling “unprecedented gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the history of Zambia” at 3.8 per cent in 2024, a projected 5.8 per cent in 2025 and a target of 6.4 per cent for 2026.
“Increased mining activity, ‘agricultural recovery’ and a ‘strong’ information and communication technology sector are seen as the key drivers of this growth,” he writes.
“What they are hiding is that the masses are not benefiting from the billions of profits siphoned out of this country by their friends, the mining conglomerates. They are ashamed to admit that without good rains, there would be no ‘bumper maize harvest’ to talk about amidst their misguided agricultural policies.”
Dr Musumali is surprised that the UPND does not see the existing immense red tape, bureaucracy, financial and fiscal constraints still chocking the development of indigenous Zambian entrepreneurs.
He dismisses the statement by Minister of Finance and National Planning Dr Situmbeko Musokotwane that the measures the UPND has already taken since it came into office and those that will follow are designed to take Zambia’s economy to a level not experienced in the country before.
“It is lies and propaganda. We have scrutinised the allocations to and policies for mining, agriculture, energy, transport, tourism, manufacturing, human and social development, governance and environmental sustainability,” Dr Musumali says.
He has decried the paltry allocation to the education sector saying investment in social capital was the best ever a government could make for its people.
He scoffs at claims that the claims that Zambia’s economy is flourishing because they do not reflect the truth.
“The masses of our people are daily crying about hunger, the high cost of living, poor education outcomes, a dysfunctional health system, load shedding, joblessness, an agricultural policy that has marginalised small-scale farmers, corruption, injustice as well as toxic regionalism. These would have been the foundation and starting point of a people-centred budgetary process,” Dr Musumali writes.
