2023 budget favours foreign investors - LM

THE 2023 national budget is a limping duck because most of its pronouncements are tailored to foreign aid-oriented resources while much of it is focusing on consumption instead of production, says the Leadership Movement (LM).

LM national coordinator Jairos Ngoma has told journalists in Lusaka that the budget should have concentrated its focus on production in key sectors of the economy such as agriculture, with major emphasis on revivng industries such as Nitrogen Chemicals Zambia Limited.

Mr Ngoma said Government should have prioritised recapitalising the Nitrogen Chemicals of Zambia (NCZ) so that it could increase its production of fertilisers and enable farmers to have access to the inputs without difficulties.

He said his party had a problem with the new dawn administration’s stance to borrow for consumption instead of investing in production that would see Zambians come out of shackles of poverty.

He said it was disappointing the agriculture sector had been sacrificed by way of removing many peasant farmers from the Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP), which was a humanitarian solution to their plight.

Nr Ngoma said the removal of hundreds of peasant farmers from FISP was an indication that the agriculture sector was not receiving the attention it deserved from the new dawn administration

He said with the high cost of fertiliser which the UPND government had promised to reduce while in the opposition, many peasant farmers who have been banished from accessing FISP would sink into deeper poverty situations because they were unable to buy the input using their own money.

He said the new dawn administration should reverse the route of consumption they have taken and begin to invest in production because only then would the government be working to grow the country’s economy and reduce poverty while creating employment.