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Advocate Jacob Mudenda

Auxilia Katongomara, Chronicle Reporter
PARLIAMENT is set to resume business earlier than usual with debate on the 2018 National Budget expected to take centre stage.

Both the National Assembly and Senate adjourned for the festive season on December 20 and traditionally MPs resume their duties at the end of January or mid-February every year after breaking for Christmas.

Speaker of Parliament Advocate Jacob Mudenda told lawmakers on the last sitting that they will be back for business earlier.

“I also wish to inform the House that the date for the Post-Budget Seminar has since been changed to Monday, 8th January, 2018 while the Post-Budget consultations by Portfolio Committees will be held from Tuesday, 9th January to Friday 12th January, 2018,” he said.

The Clerk of Parliament Mr Kennedy Chokuda said the National Assembly would resume sitting on January 15.

“We are going to start early because we have to tackle the issue of the budget. We are going to resume business on January 15,” said Mr Chokuda.

When Parliament reconvenes, legislators will go through all allocations and other matters related to the National Budget to ensure that loose ends are tied up.

Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa earlier this month presented a $5,1 billion National Budget under the ‘New Economic Order’ theme.

Minister Chinamasa said the fiscal policy statement has to reflect the new trajectory that deals with challenges facing the country.

The Minister said the era of indiscipline in Government expenditure, which has been blamed for creating an unsustainable budget deficit, must be stopped.

In his presentation, he also announced a cocktail of cost cutting measures in the public sector among them, maintaining a recruitment freeze on non-critical fields, reducing foreign travel delegations, closing technically insolvent parastatals, implementing a voluntary retrenchment and trimming work benefits for senior officials such as fuel allocations as well as number of allocations.

The Finance Minister said Government will abolish 3 700 posts for youth officers while 528 civil servants above the age of 65 have been retired.

Most Cabinet ministers have cancelled their 2017 festive season travel and have awakened their respective teams to the imperative of delivering key outcomes. — @AuxiliaK