An economist has welcomed Zambia and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reaching a Staff Level Agreement (SLA).
Kelvin Chisanga says the agreement could help Zambia reach an expeditious solution between the country and its creditors regarding debt restructuring.
Speaking in a telephone interview, Mr Chisanga is hopeful that the debt restructuring process which has taken long to be resolved could soon meet a solution.
He said the agreement also brings a huge amount of credibility to the debt restructuring process.
“It basically shows to say that futuristically, we are looking at trying to work right in tandem with the IMF conditions and terms which is giving us a lot of energy for us to push through. Yes, we have had a situation where the debt delays have been causing a lot of issues but I’m sure that the involvement of the IMF team, having to agree another extension programme which rallies from this time to next 12 months, shows a lot of credibility on our side,” he said.
Mr Chisanga said the longer the process of debt restructuring is taking, the more impact it is having on Zambia’s foreign exchange status.
“The longer we take with the debt process, the more we even seeing a lot of overheating factors which are now giving an offshoot effect through the exchange market. Even when you look at the overall economic factors, we are experiencing uncertainty around the whole economic structure,” Mr Chisanga said.
The Zambian Government on Thursday announced that it had reached a Staff Level Agreement with IMF on economic and financial policies that will anchor programme implementation for the next 12 months.
This entails that once approved by the IMF management, Zambia will access 188 million United States dollars which will bring the total of IMF financial disbursement under the arrangement to 376 million United States dollars.
How many such agreements have had before this latest one? There’s need for a general conference of economists and financial types to evaluate Zambia’s place in the current international economic and financial system. There’s nothing to cheer us up about the latest staff level agreement.
Year in year out no progress all the time same song,in a month you can finishing negotiations I’m sure 30days it is very enough,no need of taking 4years to end that credits.
Sunday things, just sat on my veranda polishing and cleaning my guns
This will be like the subsidies story. I thought you chaps already agreed to some SLA. Which one is this one now? Draft 2? Beta Draft? Awe, if you have failed kucita stabilize vintu just say so mwe. Wina azafuntilapo pamene apa. Nimuuzani.
Last year’s IMF debt was not given at once. It was meant to be disbursed in batches. Every review must look at conditions met for that period by Zambia. Funds approved by the Board are then released to wait for next lot appraisal at six months intervals.
What the dustbob is a SLA?
We warned you that IMF will bleed you to de@th. They will use all sorts of jargons and science to put you in a web of complication to a point where your future generations will find it impossible to recover from. When they say doing the same thing but expecting a different result is outright 1nsan1ty.
Economists are lying, platitude spouting crooks.
The only question is: what has nearly 30 years of neoliberal economic policy done for ordinary people? Did the market provide? Did the natural processes of capitalism provide services to all like the state once did?
At what point do we just say that an economic system and philosophy called neoliberalism has just failed?