Actualise recovery programme - Mutati

THE economic recovery programme is in the right direction to revive the economy, but the implementation process will be the main challenge, says Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) president Felix Mutati.

Mr Mutati said despite the ability to put together plans, ideas and programmes for economic reforms, Zambia still had a deficit of plan implementation.

“The biggest challenge which the plan will face will be its implementation process,” he said.

Mr Mutati, who is former Minister of Finance said yesterday that debt and credit worthiness still remained a critical setback in achieving the programme particularly that debt sustainability analysis was yet to be done.

“The ability to put together plans, ideas and programmes is in abundance. Where we have a deficit as a country is in the area of implementing the things and for me this is the biggest challenge the Economic Recovery Plan is going to face,” Mr Mutati said.

He said the objectives of the Economic Recovery Plan recently launched are the same as those put in the “Zambia

Plus” including the structural reforms, a programme that was developed at a time he served as minister of Finance.

“If we implement, we could see some semblance of recovery but what is more crucial is that this comes after the ‘Zambia Plus’ that we had and the objectives of the ERP are the same as we had put together in the Zambia Plus.

“But what we were able to do then in our Zambia Plus Programme was to gather implementation momentum,” Mr Mutati said.

He indicated that as part of the implementation of the Zambia Plus, the Farmer Input Support Programme was successfully audited and cleaned up 600, 000 ghost beneficiaries on the register.