Govt optimising tight resource envelope for sustainable growth

GOVERNMENT is integrating various approaches to optimise the available resources for sustained impact across Zambia to overcome some of the development challenges the country is faced with.

The move is a precursor to sustainable growth through job creation with investments in education and healthcare as well as environmental protection.

This was raised by the Finance

and National Planning Minister, Dr Situmbeko Musokotwane, at a public lecture on Setting National Priorities for Sustainable Development: More Money or More value for money in Lusaka.

“Challenging as this might be, we are not worried, thus, we have continued to mobilise resources through budgetary allocations with support from cooperating partners, and participation of the private sector and other stakeholders.

“To entrench the implementation processes, Zambia undertook the second voluntary national review in 2023, which was a stocktake to benchmark Zambia’s progress in programme implementation against the sustainable development goal targets,” Dr Musokotwane said.

He, however, said it was noted that various challenges needed to be addressed to facilitate effective implementation and attainment of targets.

These challenges included among others, disease outbreaks as well as the effects of climate change and variability and geo political conflicts.

The minister also raised concern that the ever-diminishing financial resources globally has adversely impacted implementation of interventions meant to attain Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) targets.

“There are huge financing gaps to effectively address all the 2015 promises the global leadership undertook to deliver by 2030,” Dr Musokotwane said.

He, however, said Government is committed to ensuring meaningful progress is made in the implementation of programmes that facilitate the attainment of SDGs.

At the same function, Copenhagen Consensus Centre president, Bjorn Lomborg, stressed the need for governments to set right priorities if they are to achieve the SDGs.

Prof Lomborg also emphasised on the need to make policies more efficient for Zambia.

“Focusing on the right things first will allow you to do more with little money,” he said.