HOW CAN A MAN WHO WANTS TO BE PRESIDENT FAIL TO UNDERSTAND SIMPLE ECONOMICS OF COMMODITY PRICE.

HOW CAN A MAN WHO WANTS TO BE PRESIDENT FAIL TO UNDERSTAND SIMPLE ECONOMICS OF COMMODITY PRICE.

NOW LET ME EDUCATE.

By Chadrin Nseemani

There is a simple economics lesson that every Zambian must understand and that Mr Brian Mundubile must take time to learn. The prices of commodities cannot come down immediately. It is not magic. It is economics.

When President Hakainde Hichilema took over in 2021, he did not find a functioning economy. He found an empty treasury, a mountain of debt that was choking the nation, a kwacha that had lost value, and fuel and fertilizer contracts that were designed to benefit a few individuals at the expense of millions of Zambians. You cannot fix ten years of damage in ten months. You cannot fix such destruction with a political slogan.

Let us learn this basic economics in a simple way. The price of mealie meal is not decided in State House. It is decided by the cost of fertilizer, the cost of fuel to transport it, the cost of electricity to mill it, the exchange rate of the dollar to the kwacha, and the interest rate that the farmer borrowed to produce it. If fertilizer was bought expensively yesterday, fuel was high yesterday, and the dollar was high yesterday, then mealie meal will be expensive today even if you have a good President today. The economy works with a delay. What you plant today, you harvest tomorrow.

President Hichilema from 2021 started with the roots, not the leaves. He started by restoring confidence, by restructuring the debt that was making everything expensive, by stabilizing the kwacha that had become a joke, by removing middlemen in fuel procurement, and by giving farmers free access to inputs so that production can go up. These are the fundamentals. When you fix the fundamentals, the price will eventually come down and stay down sustainably. When you play politics with prices, you get a temporary drop and a permanent crisis later.

What did the previous regime do? They subsidized things they could not afford by borrowing heavily. They made prices look low while the debt was growing behind our backs. It was like a family that looks rich because they are eating borrowed food every day. President Hichilema came and said, we must stop eating borrowed food, we must start cooking our own food, even if it is painful at first. That is leadership. That is honesty.

So when Brian Mundubile and others stand up to say prices have not come down, we must ask them, do you understand economics or you are just playing politics? Do you think the price of bread comes down because you shout in Parliament? Prices come down when production goes up, when the cost of doing business goes down, when fuel supply is stable, when the kwacha is strong. And all those indicators are now moving in the right direction under President Hichilema.

Zambians are wise. They know that a house that was destroyed for years cannot be rebuilt in one day. They know that President Hakainde Hichilema  is doing the hard, correct work that guarantees that when prices finally come down, they will not go up again. This is the economics of patience, the economics of truth, the economics of a new dawn.

By Chadrin Nseemani