Dodia highlights budget expectations

THE forthcoming national budget presentation should highlight mechanisms to promote employment of Zambians, the Private Sector Development Association (PSDA) has said.

PSDA chairperson, Yusuf Dodia, said they were concerned about job losses due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Mr Dodia said in an interview that before the pandemic, the country was already facing some economic challenges among them the prolonged load shedding which prevented businesses from performing at full capacity, rise in the inflation rate and unstable exchange rate.

“Definitely as a nation we are concerned about job losses, we are concerned that how are we going to resolve the issues of keeping people in employment when the cost of doing business has become very high.

“Because before the pandemic in 2019 we already had some economic challenges in the country. We saw as we entered in 2020 electricity tariffs went up by 300 percent, the charges from government departments had shot up, the inflation rate was rising and exchange rate for the dollar was also becoming very expensive,” he said.

Mr Dodia said the PSDA expected to see in the forthcoming budget presentation the increase in non-taxable income for people that earn below K6, 000 because the cost of living was high.

He added that the budget should also address the cost of doing business, Government fees and high Zesco tariffs.

The PSDA feared that if the country continued on such a trajectory then a lot of businesses would stop investing in value addition and