Headline : UPND strategies to rebuild the economy

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IN the run up to the 2021 general elections in which the United Party for National Development (UPND) emerged victorious, beating the Patriotic Front (PF) by over one million votes, the vanquished PF were reminded time and again about the manner they were mismananging the economy.Here we go back in the archives and bring to light some of the advice they were given and UPND Deputy Chair for Policy and Research Joseph Lungu in his write-up of Thursday, 4th February, 2021 cautioned the then government about some of the economic atrocities they committed.

OUR economy is in a mess. All the pre-2011 developmental gains that the Zambian economy had registered under the MMD government have been completely wiped out by the PF. The majority of our people are suffering at levels which most of our younger population have never seen before. We are deep in debt, have defaulted, we cannot meet our interest payments and now have the world’s second worst sovereign credit rating. The interest payments alone, at 44 per cent of total government revenue, are the second highest of any country in the world. At the same time, our budget cannot adequately finance the public wage bill and meet the much-needed social expenditures and the value of our once rising kwacha is now severely eroded.All in all, we are now saddled with loans that have delivered very little benefit to the Zambian people, but an awful lot of benefit to corrupt politicians and corrupt government officials. So, when they ask us to “Sonta” they are actually asking us to “Sonta” the few that have benefitted from the loans.The PF administration has now come up with an Economic Recovery Plan. At least we can give them credit that they now acknowledge they have messed up our economy and need a plan to recover. But do we seriously believe that they can dig us out of this mess? Do we really buy into any of their plans when they have destroyed the economy in the first place through their own greed and incompetence? Does greed and incompetence just disappear overnight? Or do we believe they are doing anything to rid themselves of their greed and incompetency? No, we can only remove it through the polls later this year.We would like to share our immediate (short term) actions to lift our economy to the pre 2011 levels:

By JUDITH NAMUTOWE
 - THE Zambezi River Authority (ZRA) has said the feasibility study on the Batoka Hydropower Station has been reviewed. ZRA chief executive officer Munyaradzi Munodawafa said in an interview yesterday that the review on the demo structure, power house and capacity output on the project had been completed. Mr Munodawafa said the authority was currently waiting for the second phase of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). ‘‘We have reviewed the Batoka Hydropower Station feasibility study. The study on the demo structure, power house structure and the capacity output on the project has been completed,’’ Mr Munodawafa said. He said the finalisation of the study and the EIA was expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2015. Mr Munodawfa said consultants were currently working on other processes and thereafter the project committee which include senior Government officials , utilities and ZRA would visit the project this month. He said once all these processes were completed, ZRA would then be able to select the developer for the project, after which the authority would be able to come up with the actual value of the project. Zambia and Zimbabwe signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to team up and start the Batoka hydropower project which is estimated to cost about US$4 billion. The agreement was signed during the council of ministers held at Kariba in Siavonga recently.

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