Ms Deka said that PMRC was further encouraged by growth in Gross Domestic Product- GDP, adding that this was an indication that the Zambian economy is resilient.
Ms Deka said that the move will lead to sustained economic growth, improvements in terms of trade and a stronger exchange rate if supported by sound fiscal and monetary policy.
The PMRC Executive Director said that while her institution acknowledged that a reduction in inflation rate may not necessarily result in reduction in food prices, it is an indication that prices are increasing at a reduced rate.
She told ZNBC News that the effect is that the general citizenry can benefit from stability in commodity prices.
And an economist has said that the 4 %t GDP growth rate recorded in the first half of 2016 by Zambia is an indication that the economy is growing. Shabdin Mweemba said that the growth, which is higher than the projected growth of around 3 percent, gives the country hope that 2017 will be a good year.
Mr. Mweemba told ZNBC News in an interview that there is need to put more efforts in various sectors of the economy to register further economic expansion.
Mr. Mweemba added that government should focus on increasing productivity levels in the agriculture sector.
Meanwhile Mr. Mweemba said tha5t he was happy that the country is closing the year with a single digit inflation rate of 7.5 percent. He has however advised government to now focus on creating employment for citizens.
Mr. Mweemba said interest rates on the contrary are expected to rise even further because government is offering good rates on bonds and treasury bills resulting in less money in circulation.
Then why are prices for going up? The value of the Kwacha portrayed by BOZ is FAKE.
Air time
Data
Parking
Toll fees
Fuel
TV levy
PAYE
Motor insurance
Electricity
Water
Mealie Meal
Food in general
Why praise them when the got us in this mess to start with … I will never understand pa Zed…..The PF are responsible and the did it for political expediency …sontapo was a by product of this mess
Shut up please,,,,,,,, prices of everything are going up, workers are not being paid on time if at all they are paid, people are dying of lack of medicine, the list is endless! So don’t talk about stup!d single figures,,
@Ndobo kkkkkk ati list is endless. But beer price went down. Is it because the customers are not paid?
Excise is going up. The price of dopes is going the same way. Up up Avenger
Zambia twa lisebana.
With I don’t just believe what these dogs say. I have always said, what ever PF minions say the direct opposite is the truth.
Who has independently verified these cooked up figures? The IMF has still has a double digit figure which is about 21% as the real inflation rate for Zambia under PF today.
My economic knowledge tells me inflation comes down when prices for essential good are either stable or falling. I doubt very much if PF minions are using an international standard for determining inflation here. Its possible they are using house prices or some other commodity which has lost value because people can no longer afford it.
Lungu and his fake lungunomics never ceases to amaze me. All PF stooges are but just a bunch of clowns who want Zambia to have an uneducated population…
Lungu and his fake lungunomics never ceases to amaze me. All PF stooges are but just a bunch of clowns who want Zambia to have an uneducated population so they manipulate them even further.
Zambians I urge you to arise and defeat this Lungu dictator.
VIVA UPND and the HH and GBM team.
Don’t call this ragged town above a city, it looks like a shanty town. How can a capital city for a country so rich in natural resources and has been independent for over 50 yrs remain an eye sore in this way-even the sanction grounded Mugabe’s Harare is much a beautiful city than this dirty filth guetto called Lusaka.
Ba ficol@ur where have you been taking all the monies you have been harvesting year in year out from the copper mines? This Zambia is really a miserable nation!
The bank of Zambia has done a great job to bring inflation back to a single.
The problem with many people that they think bringing inflation down implies bringing prices down.
What rate of inflation means, in terms of priices, is that prices will go up at the rate of of inflation.
When inflation goes down, it means will be going up but at a lower rate than before.
It does mean prices will com down, unless the rate becomes negative.
When inflation rate reaches 0? that is when it means prices stay still.
@Maloza
Inflation rate drop does not mean that prices are not going up. It means that the RATE at which the prices go up is slower. In simple Maths, it is like this. At the beginning of February 2016, the price of a commodity costing K100.00 rose to 122.70. In December the price of the commodity would now rise from 122.70 to 131.90.
So, at the beginning of the year, the cost was K100. At the end of the year, it is K131.90. This is still an increase in price. The use of the inflation rate is for you to predict what the price would be in 6 months or a year’s time. If we start with another commodity at K100 in January, we would expect the price to not rise more than K107.50, this time.
@Hammaa House
I feel sorry for your misery.
Bwana the rate of inflation means prices are still going up but at a rate of 7.5%. it doesn`t mean when inflation rate drops that prices are also dropping.
e.g if we buy a bag of mealie meal in december 2016 at K100 and then in december 2017 you buy the same bag at K150 the rate of inflation is 50% now look forward to december 2018 you buy the same bag at K155. infaltion now is only 3%. you see prices are still increasing at 3% but slower.
Praising grz for reduction in the inflation rate is like praising a rapist for reducing his rate of raping or lauding a murderer for reducing the number of victims per month. Dumb kadas and kada related organisations (no gumption orgs ngo’s) are so fukced up that they will cheer their mothers rape for money.
If your girlfriend/wife only kicks you once per week on the balls instead of once per hour, should you celebrate the reduction?
Your examples belong to the devils world. Why cant you give appropriate examples. In any case, even the reduction in occurrence of your satanic events is a good sign that better things are on the way.
@ Ken
Truth hurts?
@ Ken, in your good time take a short economics 101 remedial class. The inflation rate is not a good thing. It is bad. One does not illustrate bad things with good examples. The inflation rate is the rate at which the prices are rising in relation to prices last sampling. It has nothing to to with good occurrences. Since you want to go all religious on me. Last check, this is the devils realm, dude. If you think this is heaven you need a refresher in Revelations. Ku funda umwana …
Inflation is not necessarily brought by GRZ.
Your analogy is ill-applied.
The comparison should not be with the rapist or the murderer but with the police, who have slowed down the murderer or the rapist.
In that sense I would not see anything wrong with praising police interventions.
@ peace for Zambia. please do not assume that we are all dunderhead kadas of PF out here. Whether one uses the Retail price index or any other index one does not measure the interventions of the government or the central bank as markers. The rate of change of retail prices is the index – rate that is being tracked. Please return to the Gobbels school of public hoodwinking and masterb@tion of the government for a new bullcr@p session. if 30 murders occur in December and 38 occur in january the 39 are committed in February a 21% increase has been recorded in January and a 2.5% has been recorded in Feb are you going to say the police should be congratulated for the 39 deaths?
@ 2.5 Looda,
You have some reasoning which you believe is alright; you are free to think that way.
You will be totally wrong to think that everyone will think you are right.
So, you do not gain any more dignity by belittling or insulting other people but by offering the content of your brain.
In fact many people, including me, believe that insulting is the most clear sign of brain failure or its serious malfunction.
@2.5 Looda,
Your reasoning also seems to suggest that people are congratulating the government for the 7.5 percent inflation.
That is a totally misplace view. People are congratulating the government for the reduction rather than the end rate.
How can you congratulate police for any death?
The kind of thinking that seem to think that the deaths are caused by police is misplaced.
Police are congratulated for reducing the rate of crime, not for the number of the final incidents of crime.
I know that we reason very differently, which makes our debate lack direction and value. But anyway every Jim and Jack is entitled to the social media.
@ Peace for Zambia
PLEASE stop shoving your 1mbecility in public.
Yah, PF its greatest party, Zambian inflation was caused by UPND, Bank interest rates are global, malnutrition and destitution increase was caused by UN, lack of job opportunities by Obama, collapse of law and order has been caused by Boers, corruption in judiciary was induced by LAZ and genetic 1mbecility of PF supporters was induced by colonialists………
Since every institution in Zambia is corrupt to the core, from the judiciary, legislature and executive, how can you be sure this inflation figure is accurate? The stats office churns up one cooked number after another. Besides this govt’s policy is based on lies. Well the reality is that more people (from the look of things, not stats) can’t afford even the basics. Wherever you look you only see millions of undernourished humans hurrying about in search of food. This is the reality Zambians have accepted and comfortable with.
Hear hear. Getting stats on number of houses with mosquito nets from cso, yes. Getting dumb indices from cso that are meant for grz m@sterbation sessions and donor eargasms, yes. All other cso data is worth a cats fart in a tornado.
So if this is “progress” why are there hundreds more street kids begging for food on the streets in Lusaka?
The TRUTH of the matter is that all the money spent on JUST ONE of Lungus useless international tourist trips could feed these kids for a whole YEAR!
But he is praying to God to do it because he is too busy making sure there is less JAMESONI in Zambia.
@ Truth (me speaking in an ironic, tongue-in-cheek manner). Those are not street kids, those are the new Parkrite limited agents. They are not begging for food, they are advising you that there will be a photo op at state house this evening where there will be food and park rite will be handling the parking. Hence the park rite officials are gesturing that if you are hungry, go to statehouse this evening and get food.
We need visible development not this nosense
Amai Daka, to be really useful try quitting giving the party and government blow jobs for their pleasure and try being more useful to the general public by gathering data that means something to people. There is already a ministry of (dis) information that covers GRZ in terms of the hog wash, bullcr@p and shiny-5hit areas. Go find yourself 14,700 families around Zambia and track how many of them can feed, cloth, shelter and educate their children. track these over a 3 month period and give us the stats on that. Tell us how any of them sent their kids to school, how many had a preventable death in the family, how many have access to clean drinking water and whether their kids are stunted and can compute and write in English. the rest of your stats mean as much as the size of your labia and…
Praise singers! It’s a wrong culture!
The development is welcome. However, this is cooked figure. Compared to neighbouring SADC countries of Botswana and South Africa, Zambia has the highest Interest rate of 15.5% & importation rate of over 80% of total consumption. With high interest Rate of 15.5%, Zambia can’t achieve this low rate of 7.5%.
South Africa Inflation Rate 6.3% Lending Interest Rate 7.0%
Botswana Inflation Rate 2.9% Lending Interest Rate 5.5%
Zambia Inflation Rate 7.5% Lending Interest Rate 15.5%
The reduction in inflation rate has been achieved by increasing the interest rate to lower borrowing & spending thus slowing down the economic activity.
Counter intuitive fiscal policies. This smacks of GRZ pleasing appointees at BOZ and Min of Finance. They shout “investment, productivity and such like” but make it illogical to borrow to achieve the said production. Its like someone playing great music and getting the ambience right for dancing then telling you to break dance on a bed of poisoned nails while holding a 50kg bag of cement. As long as their bed is feathered and their kids are at the expensive schools and their wives have the second best jobs with 10 flat in chalala and a few houses, we can all go fukc ourselves.
@ true Zambian
Zambian lending rate by the commercial banks is 40% for secured loan and 60% for unauthorized OD
An NGO only needs to put out one lame report that establishes them as government flunky’s for me to cancel them permanently from my data, information sources. Congratulations! you have attained that status ba Policy Monitoring and Research Centre. Guy out there, have you noticed how these PMRC are parroting already published statistics and generating any of their own or doing any validation or cross checking or interpretation of the twaddle they are repeating. These must be recent graduates from a really bad university college or their learning programme didn’t include critical thinking. Ba graduate ba boza. Data interpretation FAIL!
You must be a very big empty tin to believe this inflation reduction nonsense. I am not partisan here, but for inflation to reduce from 19 to 8% something will have changed drastically in our economic fundamentals. Start working guys, you can’t change inflation figures psychologically. What do you take us for?
Power of prayer?
Keep praising cooked up figures on paper while the common Zambian on the ground suffers in the dark. Very sad that we entering 2017 with worse conditions. Let us reflect at new year on the wrong decision you all made to allow lungu to he inaugurated in stolen election
They based those figures on the price of sirloin stake among others that zambians can’t afford.
These are figures worked out from the back garden at state house on a sunny afternoon by someone on a laptop and lungu looking on with a glass of whisky in his hands…
Price of sirloin in 2015 was 49.90 and now its 79.90. Only 7% increase over last 12 months
Education is still a challenge in zambia, an inflation rate at 7.5% means prices are increasing at that rate per year pn average. And that bn a small number, means the change in prices will be slow and somehow stable unlike moving at 22% we were expriencing.
“…..Mr. Kalumbi has attributed the decrease in the annual food inflation rate to decreases in the inflation for fillet steak, live chicken, imported cooking oil, table salt and dressed chicken…..”
How many zambians relaiy on fillet stake as a staple ???
This is just unbelievable, how inflation is calculated, and indeed get to single digit, when the price of mealie meal is still above K100..if we get the 5 years inflation, it is over 200%…This is not because tatutasha, its because reality on the ground is a total shame, and an insult to Zambian, for someone to even praise an annual inflation of 7.5%….guys, lets be serious going forward
lets see those stats for jan 2017 and feb 2017 after we go to the new budget cycle with electricity,water,civil servants wages(emoluments) zmk currency, etc gets to cost reflective (true cost value) we are going to be worse than zim.
Dear Economists, where are you please? PF is rewriting our books and all we can say is base effect? Ba BOZ at shani apo? For how long are we expected to bear with loan repayments that have trebbled? If your stats are anything to go by, why are interest rates not coming down? How do you intend to grow this miserable economy without affordable credit? Are we going to continue surviving on foreign cash injections?
The bank of Zambia has done a great job to bring inflation back to a single.
The problem with many people that they think bringing inflation down implies bringing prices down.
What rate of inflation means, in terms of priices, is that prices will go up at the rate of of inflation.
When inflation goes down, it means will be going up but at a lower rate than before.
It does mean prices will com down, unless the rate becomes negative.
When inflation rate reaches 0? that is when it means prices stay still.
..@peace ..
…can you rewrite you comment and post something which can make sense….
@ 16.1 scrutinizerer,
…Can you improve you education so that what people write, and what you read can make sense to you…
When you are 18 you can shag a girl 7 times a night. When you are 25 you can only upload 2 times a night and when you are 46 its once a week. Are you going to praise your girl for shagging you down from 7 times per night to once a week. Are you not the one that has become an (ORS) one round specialist.
Back of Zambia has done literally nothing to bring the annual Inflation index down.The statistical factors influencing the variables in the inflation formular used are factually independent from any interventions BOZ is currently employing to control the rate of annual inflation that is now manifesting! When the relavant factors were adversely affecting prices to sharply increase last year, Government was exornerating itself, saying the unfavourable economic factors were external. The high prices generated last are the ones responsible for the high denominators there being applied in the inflation formular, not BOZ! If indeed BOZ is responsible for bringing down Inlation to single digits this year, then they should take blame for the extronomical increases that the Counntry had…
@ 1MBECILE #16 and 16.2
You are 100% uneducated arse licking and d1ck sucking born 1mbecile.
@ 16.4 Lungu,
From you language I can tell how you were brought up;
What type of parents you must have had;
And how they used to behave in your presence as a little kid.
If you think your behavior and language is good you must have learnt from your parents, unless you tell me that your parents had bad manners and you have good ones, or you admit you have bad manners.
…I don’t trust MoF…these figures can just b the manipulation of Mutati for his step on first rung on the ladder to the highest office….
you can do the calculations for ur self mate.. besides, there are more credible institutions that track inflation. so do some research and don`t complain for being ignorant.
People !!! the rate of inflation means prices are still going up but at a rate of 7.5%. it doesn`t mean when inflation rate drops that prices are also dropping.
e.g if we buy a bag of mealie meal in december 2016 at K100 and then in december 2017 you buy the same bag at K150 the rate of inflation is 50% now look forward to december 2018 you buy the same bag at K155. infaltion now is only 3%. you see prices are still increasing at 3% but slower.
malabishi
This is a very useless article because as far as am concerned i have not seen that reduction in anyway whatsoever. Mealie-meal, cooking oils and all groceries are rising up, fuel and capital machinery are all going up. Ms Deka, i dont know what analysis methodology you are using but if you have a degree in economics or any related field then you must have gotten it fraudulently.
Growing the economy my foot. Which economy grows without energy? All this load shedding and you claim to grow the economy. You think we are foools
Most Zambians have such a scaring complex.The best time to have manipulated figures would have been in the election year,but this govt still risked and published those high figures.Now things are getting better,stability is on..and this is the basis of growing our economy.We can grow our economy by diversifying into agriculture.By the way you do not need 2000 hectares to do agriculture.The little maize you and I grow,will stiffle these capitalists millers and force them to bring down prices of mealie meal.The problem is Zambian suffer a serious complex.Always making comparison,as though others just found themselves up there.Work,work and things will get better for as an individual and as a country.Get busy idle bodies!!!!
Of course a reduction in inflation rate is a result of government policy of issuing higher interest rates on bonds & treasury bills resulting in less money in circulation. Such a credit squeeze never puts more money in your pockets, neither does it spur a reduction in food prices. Come 2017 ni lwakwa Noah lwanya bebele Zambia economics, kaili ifintu ni Lungu mwaebele!
It’s most embarrassing that someone in such an important position as Bernadette Deka can exhibit such a lack of apprecuation about the correlation between different types of inflation and the general price of goods and services in the economy. This article is intellectually bankrupt, its YELLOW!
By the way, the way inflation and prices interact in the economy is not the same way that a poor potentially chorela carrying mango fruit from a dirty street gets butchered by Chagwanic croc teeth in his mouth, no! The former has numerous potential outcomes based on the nature of inflation while the later is nothing but proof of dangerous terrible eating habits by an embarrassment fontini doubling as president of Zambia!
Even in america the economy favours the rich not a poor man.Get rich or die trying!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
No Government can grow any economy!!!!!! Just grow it in your own pocket………………………………
I dont understand i remember when Mwanawasa was President when inflation rate went down the exchange rate against the dollar the kwacha gained.. But this time around thats not the case.. Whats the Maths?
Mwanawasa simply reaped chiluba’s planting.
What Chiluba laboured to do, by creating the environment for hipic completion was enjoyed by Mwanawasa on a silver platter.
If any thing Mwanawasa brought more corruption to this country than any other president ever, but managed to blind many people by dancing to M’membe maneuvers regarding chiluba’s case.
Corruption reached its highest during Mwanawasa, and this was revealed by independent organisations during RB time.
The first partnerships between state and the cartel was done by Mwanawasa by giving illegal and dubious tax freedom to M’membe and Mtembo Nchito at Post and Zambian Airways.
We need food not single digit inflation figures.
@ 27 – Peace for Zambia
When Chiluba was forced out of office following the 3rd term debacle, Zambia was one of the most highly indebted countries in the world The economy was virtually on its knees and cabinet collapsed as the veep Gen Tembo and half the cabinet rebelled against his 3rd term and moved a motion with UPND to impeach him. Now, how this turns out to be laying the ground for Levy vexes me deeply because the ground was scorched. Only a Katangese Luapulan can think so because their nearest comparable to an economy is Zaire, where there is basically none.
That is the understanding of many Zambians.
Many believe that when you invest at 06:00 the at 18:00 you must rip.
If you are young I can excuse your thinking, otherwise you are miraculously misled
Chiluba laboured to bring about debt cancellation by driving the country to reach hipic completion point and having the national debt written off.
Chiluba privatised the mines, all of which were getting more injection the ejection, i.e. more capital injection than cash earnings.
Copper prices had been law but when they began to pick up around the year 2000 tgey found investment in place.
And this the time mwanawasa came on the scene and began to give M’membe and Mtembo Nchito illegal and dubious tax breaks.
He also formulated a lucrative legal case against Chiluba which…
He also formulated a lucrative legal case against Chiluba which took more than seven years and hired his friend Mtembo Nchito as government private lawyer at a salary of K2 billion (unrebased) PER MONTH for 7 years.
Without RB intervention even today we were going to have Mtembo and M’membe sucking tax payer ‘s money.
Mention one policy that mwanawasa brought different from what Chiluba left. All was inherited from chiluba’s sweat and for mwanawasa it was time for ripe oranges planted by Chiluba.
nay