$210M WORLD BANK CDF LOAN
The World Bank is to lend Zambia $210 million to help double the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) to K56 million ($3 million) per year from 2024 to 2026.
This CDF borrowing raises a number of very legitimate questions seeking honest answers:
- Is it wise to raise CDF through loans?
- Is this sustainable?
- What happens when the $210 million is exhausted?
- We will borrow again?
- Ideally, shouldn’t CDF be funded through internally generated resources?
- Isn’t this the same as the fuel subsidy challenge under the previous regime whereby the subsidy was accumulating into debt?
- Won’t we be back to a debt mountain after UPND government which the next government will need to resolve?
Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party