STATE HOUSE SCANDALS WILL AFFECT IMF PROGRAM-TREVOR SIMUMBA
ECONOMIST Trevor Simumba says the bad headlines, State House official scandals, among other issues are sending a wrong signal to the IMF.
And Simumba says President Hakainde Hichilema must reset his government to show that he believes in the rule of law, accountability and transparency.
Meanwhile, Simumba has described government’s statement that it has no Plan B away from the IMF programme as wrong and scary.
In an interview, Simumba said the IMF was observing all the happenings in the country and wondering if Zambia had indeed transformed to a nation which upheld the rule of law.
“The thing is this, the people who make the decisions at the IMF in terms of these programmes it’s the executive board. And the executive board is representing all the members of the IMF and so those executive board members, they scrutinise these issues carefully. And remember that all the bad headlines that we have been seeing in the last two months, three months in this government, these executive board members are seeing them,” he said.
“When they are seeing opposition politicians being arrested for defamation, they are hearing the President threaten citizens because he feels that those citizens are criticising too strongly, they begin to ask themselves the questions is this really a change in Zambia? Is this really the government that believes in the rule of law? When they see that the State House and senior officials are involved in deals with the provisional liquidator of KCM, it sends the wrong signals.”
And Simumba asked President Hichilema to reset his government to show that believes in the rule of law, accountability and transparency.
“And for me, it’s very important that the President resets his government. He needs to reset his government, he needs to show clearly by his actions not just by words, by his actions, that he believes in the rule of law. He believes in accountability and he believes in transparency and allow the police, the anti-corruption commission and the DEC and all these law enforcement agencies to do their jobs effectively so that this corruption fight is not seen as partisan. At the moment, unfortunately, it is seen as partisan. At the moment for example, Milingo Lungu, suddenly he is a hero when we all know that that whole liquidation process was done very unfairly,” he said.
“It was not for the benefit of the country, it was to the benefit of individuals and many other interest groups within the Patriotic Front.”
Meanwhile, Simumba described government’s statement that it had no Plan B away from the IMF programme as wrong and scary.
“It is very wrong and it is very scary because there are no guarantees with the IMF. I will recall Greece, if you recall some years ago, Greece was in serious trouble. I remember the first time they started talking between the IMF and Greece, they were talking about a 20 billion line of credit. Suddenly by the time decisions were made, it went down to 10 billion. And actually, all it did was to create more debt for Greece and it took Greece a long time. In fact, the finance minister lost his job because of that failure of the first IMF programme. So Dr [Situmbeko] Musokotwane, I would advise he is skating on thin ice,” Simumba said.
He said government should treat the economic recovery plan developed by the previous administration as a Plan B.
“If you recall, both ministers are in this government – Mutati and Musokotwane. When Mutati was minister of finance, remember that Mutati developed the Zambia Economic Recovery Programme. And that programme is there in the Ministry of Finance and that programme was based on Zambia acquiring a $1.3 billion loan from the IMF and getting on a programme. So what is wrong with using that programme as a basis at least? Of course the UPND would want to add their own nuance to it, their own tax to it but it is there. The Zambia Economic Recovery Programme is there so I would urge you to ask the Minister of Finance, send him a query, the minister said there is no Plan B but what has happened to the Zambia Economic Recovery Programme? Because that would be a good Plan B of course taking into account the latest data, it would help,” Simumba said.
He insisted that as Zambia pursued the IMF programme, it needed to develop a plan on how it would grow the economy while on the programme.
“So we need to have a programme of growth. A programme of how we are going to grow the economy because you cannot just get this money from the IMF and then sit back. It does not work like that. We need to create an environment that will attract investment not just in primary production like mining agriculture, but in value adding because that’s a real game changer. If we can have more manufacturing across the country, adding value to our primary products, then we are going to have much more employment and also linking our SME to the sub supply chains into the agriculture sector into mining. We should be seeing Zambians supplying Zambeef, supplying all these big agricultural companies, national milling. Zambians should be supplying KCM, Mopani, First Quantum Minerals,” Simumba said.
“You know, First Quantum has announced a big expansion of one point something billion dollars. I would love to see in that expansion, a guarantee that 40 percent of that 1.3 billion will go to Zambian suppliers, contractors, labour and all this.”
Simumba also said government should quickly find a solution for KCM and Mopani.
“And for me, I would really love to see a solution to KCM and more importantly also Mopani. A strategic investor should be found. ZCCM should increase its shareholding in Mopani and also possibly in KCM. We should see more senior management in KCM that are Zambians. This thing of bringing people from India, and in fact, India is not even a mining country compared to Zambia, let us have credible Zambians to run KCM and they can run it efficiently. And one thing I forgot to mention, there were a number of senior Zambian managers at KCM removed by the provisional liquidator, those people should be brought back without condition, get back their jobs because they were unfairly treated,” he said.
Simumba said PF left the country in a mess.
“We know the mess that the PF left this country in. It is important for us, we have a new government, it is important to focus on solutions and the solutions require transparency, accountability and the rule of law. That is all we need from the government. If the government decides that for example, they don’t want Vedanta they want to bring someone else, explain to us clearly why you have taken that decision and how you are going to manage that process and how you are going to select those new investors. Because we also don’t want single sourcing,” said Simumba.
“We do not want let’s say, ‘let’s just give it to Anglo America, you know these are our friends they used to be here’, no! Let the process be clear and transparent and competitive. And that ensures that we get the best deal out of it for Zambia because the responsibility it is to us Zambians first, not foreigners.”