GOVT PONDERS KASABA BAY MASTER PLAN
By BUUMBA CHIMBULU GOVERNMENT is determined to put in place a master plan for the development of the Kasaba Bay Resort in Northern Province in an effort to realise its huge investment opportunities.
Minister of Finance, Felix Mutati, explained that having a master plan would enable Government develop the infrastructure and other support facilities in an orderly manner.
Mr Mutati said Kasaba Bay Resort had huge potential for economic investments hence the need to harness it properly for the country to get a lot of economic value from it.
"The opportunity we have from Kasaba bay is that its relatively virgin, let us plan it properly, we need a total master plan for it including where the hotels will be and other support facilities so that we begin to have orderly development,
"Kasaba Bay has been a difficult project and sometimes as Government, we need to face the facts as they are, for this project we have not performed well, the bay has tremendous potential for tourism," Mr Mutati said.
He noted in an interview that the Kasaba Bay resort project had been a difficult one adding that Government had not performed well in this regard.
Mr. Mutati said apart from the infrastructure being done to support the development of Kasaba Bay, there was need to learn from past implementation mistakes and regroup so that it was done properly.
“If we do not do it properly, it will not create the impact that we need, we shall be scratching on the surface, so we need sustainable investment and a new approach for the bay in order to realise it. We need to migrate from talking to implementation,” he said.
He said Government would work on the implementation model for Kalungwishi farming block to ease the implementation and begin to get some benefits from it. “That is the reason why we are focused on the Kalungwishi Farming Block because it will create 35, 000 jobs, we also know that there are other related industries that will come along in this farming block, the same thing will happen when the Kasaba Bay resort is fully developed,” Mr. Mutati said.