ANALYSIS | Opposition Economics Must Also Face the Calculator
Zambians have every right to demand better wages. Civil servants are stretched. The cost of living is real. The desire to put more money in workers’ pockets is not the problem.
The problem is when politics replaces mathematics.
Harry Kalaba’s claim that CF in government will “remove 10% from 37% of Pay As You Earn and take the 10% to salaries” is the kind of slogan that sounds generous on Facebook but collapses under basic fiscal reality. PAYE is not spare change. It is one of the most stable domestic revenue pillars in the national budget. You do not cut predictable tax inflows and call it empowerment. You cut them and create a hole.
Zambia is not operating in a vacuum. Treasury is currently walking a narrow road of fiscal consolidation, debt sustainability, and investor confidence. The Minister of Finance has repeatedly stressed that borrowing is now being managed within structured limits and that Zambia is transitioning from repair to growth. In that context, diverting PAYE into wage increments is not reform. It is consumption spending dressed as policy.
A wage bill is not a one-off campaign donation. Salaries are permanent obligations. Once you raise them through tax diversion, you lock government into recurring commitments without expanding productivity or revenue. The bill does not disappear after elections. It becomes a structural burden. And when the numbers no longer balance, the state does what states always do: borrow more, print more, or cut services.
This is where Kalaba’s proposal becomes economically dangerous. Public sector wages cannot sustainably rise faster than the economy’s productive capacity. When wage growth is not matched by productivity growth, the outcome is familiar: inflation pressure returns, purchasing power erodes, and the Kwacha weakens. The very workers being “helped” end up poorer in real terms.
Markets also watch discipline. Zambia is currently enjoying improving macro signals: easing inflation, stronger investor appetite in government securities, and renewed credibility in debt management. Proposals that convert tax revenue into politically popular consumption without replacement measures weaken fiscal anchors. They tell investors the opposition has not learned the hard lessons of the last decade.
What makes this worse is the hypocrisy of timing. Kalaba previously criticised salary increases as reckless. Now he proposes a wage expansion financed by cutting one of the government’s most reliable revenue streams. That is not leadership. That is improvisation.
True wage growth does not come from reallocating PAYE. It comes from expanding the economy, improving productivity, growing the tax base, and creating fiscal space. The responsible politics is not who promises the loudest salary bump. It is who can explain how it will be paid for without collapsing the budget.
Opposition solutions deserve interrogating too. A credible alternative government must be built on numbers, not mere claims. We cannot afford another era where fiscal policy is written like a campaign poster.
The country has already paid for that movie.
© The People’s Brief | Chileshe Sengwe
Mr. Kalaba doesnot understand the implications of his so called solutions.
In short, he has absolutely no idea on how to run a country.