IS ANOTHER DEBT CRISIS LOOMING?
THE question of Third World countries’ debts to developed nations and multilateral institutions was seen prior to the Jubilee 2000, as a great impediment to sustainable integral development on both moral and ethical grounds.
It was this conviction that led to the global and universal church to advocate for debt cancellation. Thank God, all went well and Zambia’s huge external debt was written off.
Only 15 years down the line, Zambia is faced with another debt crisis. This is incredible. What has gone wrong? We were told that HIPC was an initiative to realise two things i.e. debt cancellation and poverty reduction. While debt was cancelled and we are thankful for the good will by the civil society organizations in Europe and USA and their governments, but poverty levels have continued to escalate, so HIPC only solved one problem and failed to solve the problem of poverty reduction.
With another debt crisis looming – is it possible for Zambia to attain MIDDLE INCOME STATUS by 2030 under the Vision 2030, which is only 12 years away?
If this question never crossed the mind of Mr Felix Mutati as Minister of Finance then, it should cross over the mind of his successor, Ms Margaret Mwanakatwe MP otherwise their holding that office is meaningless.
If indeed this question crosses over the mind of our Minister of Finance - what is being done? What does this looming shadow of debt crisis mean to President Edgar Lungu?
Must we behave like an ostrich and bury our head in the sand and pretend that all is well? Why is Government not coming out and state the true position of our external debt?
Must we believe what the opposition political parties are saying? Yes, we shall believe them, unless government comes out clearly and tell us the truth.
After all, it was civil society organisations and the churches that tirelessly spearheaded the crusade for debt cancellation and government owe us an explanation over t his matter.
For me, it means only one thing and that is, we cannot attain our middle income status by 2030 as outlined in the V2030 document, because the looming debt crisis will escalate poverty levels even higher, as we shall be spending more money on servicing our debts and very little will go to social sectors as it was during HIPC.
If it is true as the opposition claim that our external debt is already way up to US$30 billion, what the government needs to do is to declare agriculture industry as priority number one and direct all investments into agriculture. With abundant rainfall and good weather, what is stopping us from being an exporter of food products? Only the agriculture sector can bail us out of the impending economic crisis which will be brought about by the debt crisis.
HISTORICAL SYNOPSIS OF DEBT
Zambia’s debt prior to MDRI/ HIPC initiative of 2005 that wrote off Zambia’s debt can be traced and attributed to many factors that collectively caused Zambia’s indebtedness.
These factors that are on record include loans incurred to help neighbouring countries in their struggle for independence, loans that we inherited from colonial times and (this is why I have always advocated for the equal sharing of assets under the federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Those assets have not been shared. Dr Kaunda made several efforts to have the assets shared but his moves were thwarted by his colleague, Robert Mugabe.
Why are we afraid of approaching Zimbabwe over this matter? History is history, you can not change it. There was that federation and we had common services such as Rhodesia Railways, Central African Airways, Federal Reserve Bank, and many other common services whose assets have never been shared.
The other factors arose from the 1972/73 sharp revenue depression resulting from falling copper prices and rising oil prices on the international market.
A GLANCE AT V2030
The vision 2030 is Zambia’s first ever written long term plan, expressing the aspirations of the Zambian people to be accomplished by 2030. It articulates the appropriate national and sector goals to meet people aspirations. The vision outlines the desirable long term paths of the social economic indicators to satisfy the people’s aspirations and articulates possible long term alternative development policy at different points through the target year 2030.
Our V2030 is a very important policy and we need to support it. However the government should at intervals issue statements on whether the country is on course. The government should also introduce measures to ensure that our V2030 is being monitored and evaluated every now and then.
CHALLENGES TO THE V2030
First of all, the words on the front page of the 7th National Development plan 2017 -2021 which says “Accelerating development efforts towards Vision 2030 without leaving anyone behind” are misleading.
There are a lot of people who have been left behind due to lack of information. The very fact that Government is dragging its feet over the issue “Access to Information Bill’ is in itself denial of people of their right to information and consequently leaving many people behind because they cannot participate in the development process without information.
I want to challenge the Secretary to Cabinet Dr Roland Msiska to reflect on this. I know of teachers who teach civics in our schools who have no access to “our decentralisation policy document” and yet decentralisation is a topic under civics. A teacher can only teach better if he or she masters that topic. How do our teachers master the topic
of decentralisation without having access to the main document? Documents such as decentralisation, 7th National Development and V2030 are supposed to be stocked in all our school libraries.
On page one last paragraph item 1.2.1 of the 7th NDP document “Economic growth and sectoral contribution” we are told that between 2000 and 2005 our economy grew by 5.8 percent. This is incredible because this was when the country was under HIPC and servicing our debts. Our debt service to IMF/World Bank was double our expenditure on education/health and social welfare put together. So it cannot be true that our economy grew by that percentage. Please Dr Msiska, help us to appreciate the challenges our country is going through by giving us a true reflection of issues.
The 7th National development Plan under “Opportunities and challenges of Zambia’s Development “has identified a number of factors as challenges to development and these include values, attitudes and behavioural change, cultural heritage and identify building, cultural change, intercultural integration, creativity and innovation and Christian ethos.
Government should pay attention to the Auditor General’s annual reports on misuse of public resources. Our Parliamentary Accounts Committee must transform
itself into a proactive
government organ and ensure that culprits are punished and Government should be seen improving on its good governance record, because there can be no development with good governance. Without improving on our governance, it will be impossible to attain our V2030.
*The author is member of Jesuit Centre for theological Reflection, member of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace recipient of Jubilee “AWARD” for participating in the campaign for debt cancellation, recipient of World Bank Award on good governance.