EAZ response to article by Greg Mills on Brenthurst Charity Foundation on Zambia’s debt position
The EAZ Board finds it sad that, instead of focusing on the macroeconomic challenges such as a consequence of rolling black outs, corruption and highly politically volatile environment in his country
Dear Editor, THE Economics Association of Zambia - EAZ would like to respond to the recent negative publicity through a damaging article entitled Avoiding debt default and turning Zambia around — at the same time written by Dr. Greg Mills of Johannesburg based Brenthurst ( Anglo- America funded charity). The Association wishes to state that Dr. Greg Mills is well known for his Op- Ed articles with intent to damage reputations and cause panic in the international capital markets in the name of independent journalism with exaggerated facts.
Such reporting is inconsistent with what the Brenthurst foundation believes its mandate is to seek ways of funding Africa development.
The EAZ Board finds it sad that, instead of focusing on the macroeconomic challenges such as a consequence of rolling black outs, corruption and highly politically volatile environment in his country, Gregory opts to immaturely misrepresent facts in a country which he has not even resided in.
Regrettably, the Association will not sit back and allow uninformed facets of society to misrepresent and paint an inaccurate picture that has damaging effects and could result in investor jitteriness in a country that is on a path to fiscal fitness recovery in the medium term.
The Association observes with regret that such poetic and extravagance of likening the Zambian debt situation to an alcoholic is malicious and immature which the Brenthurst Charity proprietors should not allow as it reflects very ill intent on the part of its writers. Let alone Zambia’s external debt is in the public domain and it is not rocket science that infrastructure spend which is being carried out with good intent has contributed to the USD9.51billion stock. This is nothing new at all.
The Zambian authorities have admitted to the current stock and have instituted aggressive measure to manage the stock through austerity measures and a Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) which should see the copper producer on a path to fiscal recovery in the medium term.
This the Association believes is not anything new to the outside community. The Zambian authorities have been transparent with through sharing of quarterly fiscal reviews. Zambia’s balance sheet vulnerabilities are in the public domain and so are the measures that its authorities are taking to correct.
The Association also acknowledges that reserves have fallen to USD$1.6billion but in mitigation, Dr. Greg seems uninformed that the authorities have placed measures such as allowing of remission of mineral royalty taxes in dollars directly to the central bank and that gold will also be added to the stock to assist boost the low stocks.