Kwacha performing better than other
currencies in Africa, Musokotwane’s Pipedream
Amb. Emmanuel Mwamba Wrote;
I’ve always maintained that Hon. Situmbeko Musokotwane is not fit for purpose and for a modern economy.
When he was appointed as Minister of Finance in 2008, he abolished the windfall tax in the mining sector, introduced by Ngandu Magande, an inaugural revenue-sharing mechanism that earned Zambia $600million in that year.
Musokotwane found an external debt of $500million in 2008 after a succesful debt write-off but by 2011 he had racked up and ballooned it to $2.8billion.
Upon his return in 2021, he found the non-deductible mineral royalty tax, with the sector earning an average of $1billion per annum since 2019. He litetally abolished the tax, and introduced tax and other incentives for the sector.
Now the sector brings in a paltry $300million per year, an outright robbery.
He abandoned the process to recover $2.5billion from First Quantum Minerals that had illegally externalised in 2010/2011, the money from Kansanshi Gold and Copper Mine. He dropped both the criminal charges against the FQM Directors, the legal case in the Lusaka High and the arbitration process in the London High Court.
He has not provided a parlthway to revover the money from FQM.
He has introduced some of the worst draconian foreign exchange regulations that have caused the Kwacha to tumble so much and lost significant value since 2021 that it is now consistently among the world’s worst-performing currency.
He is rapidly racking up debt again. He found an external debt of $11.9billion in August 2021, it’s now over $14.7billion. He found domestic debt of K178 billion but has ballooned it to K236billion.
But Musokotwane says the currency is doing far much better than most currencies in Africa, a self-serving dream he should wake up from.