By Brian Wasili
Mwanza, January 30, Mana: Mwanza District Council has presented a K14, 361, 086, 348.00 budget to the National Local Government Finance Committee (NLGFC) during this year's national budget review session at Mount Soche Hotel in Blantyre on Wednesday.
During the session, Mwanza District Commissioner, Dr. Martha Magreta Sineta said K7, 433, 566,149.00 is for personal emoluments, K932, 552, 907.00 Other Recurrent Transactions, K3, 736, 578, 000.00 Climate Smart - Enhanced Public Works Programme (CS-EPWP) activities, while Social Cash Transfer's budget at K1, 114, 774, 300.00 and K190, 643, 000.00 is projected to be generated through local revenue among other financing channels.
"There is optimism that the activities in the budget will be achieved as projected because of several innovative approaches to expand our local revenue base which have been introduced apart from the transfer of funds," said Magreta.
She added that continuing direct support to public primary schools, increasing CS-EPWP and beneficiaries of social cash transfer (SCT) are some of the major planned activities included in the budget.
The budget review session was meant to critique and validate the council budget and ensure that it is aligned with the national priority areas towards the achievement of the government's development goals and the Malawi Vision 2063 Agenda.
In an interview, NLGFC Budget Analyst, Jonathan Banda described the meeting as crucial because it provides and analyses whether the budget guidelines given to the councils in November 2024 were followed.
"Ideally it was expected that by December last year, all councils would be ready with their respective budgets to be implemented in the upcoming 2025/26 fiscal year with programmes such as Governance to Enable Service Delivery, CS-EPWP, SCT and Regional Climate Resilience funding windows embedded in the budget," said Banda.
The budget review sessions started on January 20 and are expected to be concluded on January 31, 2025, after engagement with all councils
