WE’RE WORSE OFF
…IMF money meant to frustrate, keep you small – Silumbe
By Fanny Kalonda
LEADERSHIP Movement president Richard Silumbe says Zambia needs a leadership that is driven by production and not on financial assistance from International Monetary Fund which promotes consumption.
Dr Silumbe said IMF packages dwarf African governments to make the people’s living standards continue to deteriorate.
He told The Mast that the new dawn government is moving the country’s economy from bad to worse.
“We are moving from bad to worse. We need to have leaders who think production not leaders who only look at management. Managing money when it comes instead of thinking about how to produce that cash, how to make things that bring about money. So we are moving from bad to worse. That is the genuine understanding and comparison of what we are seeing today. There is no indicator that can show us that we are improving in terms of the living standards. We have seen how the cost of mealie meal has hanged around K100…” he said. “We have heard the President talk about exporting soya beans. We will be exporting wheat, we will be exporting this to United Arab Emirates…how do you talk about exportation when you have not talked about production? We want the Head of State to talk about production.”
Dr Silumbe said IMF packages have never worked anywhere and the government should look at production and other local remedies than depend on the IMF.
He said the IMF package is meant to impoverish Zambians stressing that the government should not move outside the country to ask for money to develop the country “as it never works”.
“From the Leadership Movement perspective, we know the IMF bailout has never worked. I can take you a little bit back to the 1980s, late 80s when Kenneth Kaunda went for IMF and World Bank. What happened when he removed subsidies? That was the end of his term. People suffered more. There was more inflation, there were serious problems in this country and we never recovered from that during Kenneth Kaunda’s era. We can talk about [Frederick] Chiluba’s era. They went for IMF, it didn’t work out. Levy Mwanawasa also went, it didn’t work. What makes us feel that today going to beg will help us in resuscitating the economy?” he asked. “The answer is categorically not. It can never work. The idea that you have to move around, ask for money from outside, to make your country develop doesn’t work. It will never [work] even help the people of Zambia. What should be in the minds of any government today, it should be the issue of production. What are we producing to the outside world? What we need to start thinking about as Zambians, and what we do ourselves, we need to think about local solutions. Those IMF packages are meant to impoverish the Zambian people.”
He said if the IMF’s plan is to help African countries, the government should wonder “why they do not promote production but consumption”.
“They are meant to make sure that the African governments are dwarf. The living standards continue to deteriorate and there is no room for improvement because how would you think a package will help develop the country when the conditions are that you should remove subsidies, then the money should be used for Social Cash Transfer?” he said. “They don’t want you to use that money for productive programmes. They don’t want you to use that money to open a mine for instance. They don’t want you to use that money to create state farms. They want you to use it for consumption. That money is meant to frustrate you, to keep you small and to keep you a complete servant. We reject the issue of loans in totality because we know it never works. We need technology transfer, we need to be getting machines for instance to help us produce more.“
Dr Silumbe suggested that the government comes up with partnerships.
“We can go and come up with a partnership with other countries where we get the technology in exchange for raw materials and produce more. That is the kind of interaction with foreigners that we want. Not always a consumer, you have nothing to offer. You are just looking for money from other countries, it doesn’t work. All countries that have recovered from crisis, they have taken the route of production and they have recovered and they never went to beg for money,” he said. “When the new dawn government celebrate, we just laugh as Leadership Movement because we know that there is no track of history where we have seen that ‘thanks to the IMF, the country has developed’. You are going to see the numbers of unemployment rise in the next three years. You are going to see how poverty is going to strike this country in the next few years. They will be talking about inflation, they will be talking about all these things but Zambians are going to suffer the consequences.”
Dr Silumbe said the country is going to be under captivity of the IMF and the government will justify it with a few economic indicators.
“As we are now we are under captivity, they will talk about all kinds of justification. They will talk about fuel prices being caused by external factors. We are going to see the government justify with a few economic indicators. Pumping dollars in the Bank of Zambia and show people that the kwacha has actually gained and all those things that they’re going to play with just to justify that things are okay. In the end we are going to see poverty,” he said. “We are going back to those days in the early 2000s and late 2000 when there was a high number of street kids, high number of orphans, high numbers of parents that have died due to frustrations, depression like it happened in the 90s when we sold out industries in the name of IMF. They told us ‘sell all your mineral resources, companies. Sell off all companies run by government’ and people were clapping yes. We need to sell these things and what happened? People were dying of depression, people lost jobs without getting paid…”
He said government should work to invest in human capital and the country’s resources to produce goods that the country can export and not depend on funding from outside.
“And these things keep coming up, again and again. Each government comes, no us we are going to manage money from IMF prudently. You can never manage a loan. Think about something else. Think about other ways of creating money. As we have known up to now that no country in this world dropped out of heaven with bags of money and development. All these countries worked out local solutions and they created money, they created wealth. What is wrong with us not to create wealth, why don’t we have leadership that thinks about creation of wealth?” wondered Dr Silumbe. “Bringing into this country genuine money by way of engaging the energy of our human capital and human resources, producing tangible products that we sell to other countries, that kind of money always revolving around production. The country should not continue to pursue the same solutions that have failed the country in the past…The day they give you debt cancellation, they give you more loans again. They even tell you that this money is not for production it is about consumption. You have a lot of street kids, use it!”