ZITUKULE Consortium executive director Nicholas Phiri says Zambia may go bankrupt by 2025 if the issue of debt is not properly handled.
During a press briefing dubbed ‘The Zambia we want towards 2021 and beyond’ in Chipata on Saturday, Phiri said the government should be transparent on the US $12 billion debt.
“Whether you care or you don’t care, you’ve a debt. What will happen is this, our government failed to pay $42.5 million – this was an interest for the debt which the government. What will follow is this, our government will be blacklisted, which means that we will not be able to go outside the country to borrow money,” he said. “What will happen is that government is going to issue treasury bills. What this will mean is that the money that is in the bank that businessmen and others should have borrowed, that money will not be there because government will be competing with small and medium entrepreneurs to access it.”
Phiri said the situation would in turn affect programmes such as the Social Cash Transfer, provision of drugs in hospitals and service provision in general.
“It also means that the 2020 budget which you made will somehow be affected because part of that budget we need to borrow money to finance it. It means that government will not be able to borrow the money. So the issue of debt, I implore the media ‘let us take this discussion to a level where people will understand’ that everyone will be affected by this debt. What we are asking government to do is to come out clearly,” he said.
Phiri said Zambians should question why the government was not revealing all the debts that it had contracted.
“Government asked for tax holiday from the bondholders for six months but the government was asked to give information on other people we owe money other than the bondholders and the terms [of the loans]. Government failed to provide that information,” he noted. “And this is how the bondholders refused to give us a tax holiday. Now what citizens must be asking this government – and this is not a political issue – is ‘why is it failing to reveal the other debt? Where did it take the money that it borrowed?’ They should not just talk about roads. How much was put in the roads sector? What of hospitals or Zambia Railways?”
Phiri said citizens must ask questions so that they get answers from the government.
“Let citizens ask questions because believe you me, by the year 2025 this country will go bankrupt. We’ll not even be able to import fuel. This is what it means on this issue of debt. I urge all of us here, take this issue seriously, let us ask very difficult questions,” said Phiri. “Now the government is very comfortable because no one is asking about these things. Remember the Vice-President [Inonge Wina] and said, ‘I can assure you, we cannot default’, but just one week later we went and defaulted.”
And former Lumezi member of parliament Major Francis Kamanga said tribal insinuations were not good for the people of Eastern Province.
Maj Kamanga urged ministers from Eastern Province not to bring problems by promoting tribalism.
“The statements from our own brothers and sisters from Eastern Province who have started saying ‘as easterners we must vote for fellow easterners’. That’s a very unfortunate statement. This should not come from these people that we voted into office. We have even a traditional leader who has come on board saying ‘vote for your own person, don’t vote for an outsider’,” he said. “These are tribal insinuations that are not good for us. If you remember, I don’t know how many of us here were born then, there was an outcry by a few people from the east saying ‘Umodzi Kum’mawa’ and our founding father [Dr Kenneth] Kaunda did not mince his words and he made sure that Umodzi Kum’mawa was a dead issue and we all thank him for coming up with that move.”
Maj Kamanga recalled that Umodzi Kum’mawa cost easterners seats at the UNIP Congress with late Dingiswayo Banda being the only easterner to have won a seat at the congress.
“We shouldn’t go tribal. Eastern Province ministers, if you think your time is up, your time is up. Don’t start bringing problems for us all and start telling us to vote for an easterner. Whoever can drive this country forward, he or she must be free to come and campaign in Eastern Province and we will listen to them and make a choice,” said Maj Kamanga.
Meanwhile, a consortium of NGOs in Eastern Province appealed to the Electoral Commission of Zambia to extend the voter registration period.
In a speech read by Goodwin Banda of Lobby and Advocacy Youth Programme 2050, the NGOs stated that a lot of people would be disenfranchised by the ECZ.
“We are deeply concerned with the manner in which the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) is managing the on-going voter registration exercise as many people risk being left out of the voters roll (in other words disenfranchised) in the 2021 presidential and general elections,” Banda said. “We say so because we do not believe that the ECZ, having nullified the 2016 Voters’ Register which had over 6.5 million voters, would be able to capture nine million voters within 30 days which is due on 12th December 2020, hardly two weeks from now. It is therefore our considered view and recommendation that the Commission must extend the voters’ registration period by at least a month to ensure that any one eligible and willing to vote is not denied an opportunity to do so because of the operational challenges of the ECZ.”
Banda said the ECZ was created to facilitate and not to frustrate citizens’ right to vote.
The briefing was centred on the electoral process, debt situation and tribalism.