Empower local firms through PPP - LM

THE UPND government has been urged to consider empowering local companies as opposed to the desire and appetite of empowering foreign companies which often externalize profits even after under-declaring, the Leadership Movement has said.

should be empowering local companies through the Public Private Partnership (PPP) Leadership Movement (LM) National Chairperson David Kalumba has said.

Reacting to the construction of the Lusaka-Ndola Dual Carriageway which has been awarded to Macro Ocean Investment Consortium, a Chinese firm through the PPP, Mr Kalumba regretted that the company that will construct the Lusaka-Ndola Dual Carriageway would not only contract a loan from National Pensions Scheme Authority (NAPSA) and Workers Compensation Fund Control Board but will be collecting revenue from the toll gates mounted in the road in question for the next 25 years.

Mr Kalumba said that the UPND was a government that supported local entrepreneurs and should therefore allow Zambian companies to be part of the PPP.

He observed that the behavior of the UPND implied that the government was not supporting local businesses in the country because it was promoting the interests of foreign companies.

Mr Kalumba explains that Macro-Ocean Investment Consortium as the main contractor in the transaction was coming with little resources because NAPSA and Workers Compensation Fund Control Board were the main funders of the project.

“More toll gates will be mounted. We already have three toll gates on Ndola. Maybe, two more will be added. Now these are the people that will be making money from these toll gates,” he said.