Back local contractors, Government told
THE Government must prioritize locally owned contractors as beneficiaries as opposed to foreigners getting contracts, Chembe Member of Parliament Sabastian Kopulande has said.
It was Imperative, he said that government introduced affirmative action to give priority to Zambians that continue to favour foreigners.
Mr Kopulande told Parliament yesterday that developing countries world over have development a system of prioritizing companies owned by citizens to benefit from contracts and mining activities as opposed to awarding major works to ill- qualified foreign contractors as was the case in Zambia.
“My main point is to indeginise the economy to allow Zambian to participate in the infrastructure development of the country,” Mr Kopulande said.
Last week, Minister of Infrastructure and National Planning Lucky Mulusa disclosed that over 80 percent of contracts in infrastructure development were in the hands of foreign owned companies as opposed to local contractors.
And yesterday, a report from the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) reported that through corruption and fraud, unqualified foreign owned companies were getting Government projects and mining contracts through connections within Government structures.
This was said to have been done with possible intention of evading tax, and money laundering through corrupt activities cited in the report involving companies which constituted upto over 70 percent of the cases in question with an estimated value of over K1billion covering 2016.
The report has revealed estimated K3billion as suspected transactions with highest values in disclosures on suspected bribery and corruption with linkages to politicians and with the use of legal firms.
“…law firms were used in a number of cases to facilitate the receipt of questionable incoming funds, which in some cases originated from high risk jurisdictions. The receipts were structured in order to avoid being detected,” the report read.
Mr Kopulande has appealed to Government to structure the awarding of contracts to favour locally owned companies with little or no attachments to international firms for the benefit of the local people and the industries.