The Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection (JCTR) has said that the concern raised by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) over Zambia’s increasing unsustainable levels of spending is timely.
JCTR Director Leonard Chiti told Qfm in an interview that the concern the IMF has raised is a confirmation of what his organization has been suspecting.
Fr Chiti said that the message from IMF is timely and sends a strong message to government to check its expenditure levels or be ready to face the consequences of its growing expenditure.
He added that it is hoped that the message from IMF will be taken seriously by the government by changing its spending habits.
He noted that government should learn to listen to its people, and should not take international organizations to render advice for the government to listen.
He said that government should begin to exercise discipline in its spending and borrowing by spending within its means.
Fr Chiti said that it is pointless for government to keep spending when people cannot see the results of such expenditure.
He added that it would make sense if government was spending towards the reduction of the high cost of living which is not the case.
The International Monetary Fund has cited Zambia and Ghana as countries whose spending has been growing at unsustainable levels.
According to the report fiscal deficits in sub-Saharan Africa are rising, with Ghana and Zambia the most at risk if there’s a sudden reversal of foreign inflows, the International Monetary Fund said.
Budget shortfalls in the region “are elevated considering the prevailing high growth and still high commodity prices,” Antoinette Sayeh, director of the Washington-based lender’s Africa department, said in a statement on the IMF’s website. In Ghana and Zambia, spending has been growing at “unsustainable levels,” the IMF said in its Regional Economic Outlook.
Credit-rating companies have downgraded the debt of both nations in the past four months as they struggle to curb fiscal and current-account deficits. Ghana’s cedi and Zambia’s kwacha are the worst-performing currencies against the dollar in Africa in the past six months.
In countries where fiscal policy has weakened, the risk of debt distress has increased, the IMF said. Debt as a proportion of gross domestic product in Ghana climbed 8 percentage points between 2012 and 2013, while it rose 15 points in Malawi, the IMF said.
“Countries with large fiscal deficits or increasing debt levels, for example, Ghana and Zambia, should intensify their efforts to bring their public finances back to a sustainable footing, including by containing expenditure,” the IMF said.
The governments can make better choices on priority spending, Sayeh said in an interview today in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital.
Investors have reduced their appetite for riskier, emerging-market debt since last year after the U.S. Federal Reserve began scaling back its $85 billion-a-month asset purchase program that’s helped to prop up global growth. That’s contributed to weaker currencies in developing nations, adding to pressure on inflation.
The IMF projected consumer-price growth in sub-Saharan Africa will probably average 6.2 percent this year, compared with 5.9 percent in 2013.
IMO should go away and leave Zambia alone
Zambia is in the hands of Mr bSata who is doing a great stressful job
Non story for me
Thanks
I guess Mr Sata is better than old and tired Nicky who just waits 4 u Mushota to S**k his little ping pong
IMO or IMF?
Looks like hired insultants don’t read where there is no HH. Except Mushota, the new gun.
My apology IMF, I dont think IMO exists at all.
A natural mistake by my high standards, I don’t understand why I am getting red arrows for stating the truth
Thanks
Collective yawn, please
IDI0T. M0R0N. Go away until you can spell IMF.
In fact, JUST GO AWAY. The rubbish you try and write is just a waste of space.
@Mushota
The mistake of hitting ‘O’ instead of ‘F’ is not natural because the two letters are too far apart.
@Point
Your point is a good point.
Thanks
LOL…Mr Sata is doing a great stressful job?
@ Mushota #1.4
I expected more knowledge from you Mushota.
You do not know various important International organisation whose short name is IMO?
What happened with your pseudo education?
Joined the ranks of PF intelligentsia?
Mushota, they will never like you as long as you say the opposite to what they want to hear. My contribution is IMF is having sour grapes because Zambia is getting the dough from elsewhere for development.
Spending what one has not yet earned is one of the major demotivating factor for innovation and hard working later when it will be time to pay back. Zambia will go through difficult times in the near future if the current trend of accruing debt continues.
At the time of paying back salaries for civil servants will be next to nothing hence these workers will be demotivated and the entire economy then will be in maningi trouble.
what is an IMF? these quacks still exist? we dont need your prophecies of doom bas sh!i!t. always trying to belittle the magnificent strides of emerging economies. you quacks are the real PHD syndrome patients. hasnt america just come from borrowing its way out of a recession? what excessive borrowing?
Beggars cannot be choosers.
What is better, Loan from IMF @ 2.75% and strict accountability or loan from hedge funds @ just under 9% variable without accountability?
PF made choice and People of Zambia shall pay the price.
what is an IMF? these quacks still exist? we dont need your prophecies of doom bas sh!i!t. always trying to belittle the magnificent strides of emerging economies. you quacks are the real PHD syndrome patients. hasnt america just come from borrowing and buying its way out of a recession with stimulus packages? what excessive borrowing and spending?
5tupid
I really honestly wonder what your past time will be when HH takes over mu 2016 kudos boyi coz nda tina that you will murder yourself, like literally. Really hope you don’t though. We need balance in Zambia – dunderhead !diots like you are necessary to complement and enhance us intelligent objective ones, waishiba te? But ulomfwika bwino still more.
The role of IMF is advisory. If that was not the case, then how do you explain communist China’s great economic sucsesses? Government is focussed on accelerated rapid infrastructure devleopment. In the medium and lngterm, that is where true development and employment creation can be found.
@fake dr makasa.
How can a normal person who has been to school compare Zambia to China? China does not borrow money for its infrastructural development. It uses its own money generated from manufacturing. If only Zambia would repair and expand the capacity of the existing infrastructure and plough the rest the money borrowed into manufacturing to reduce imports by 60%, then Zambia would be able to embark on development projects like that of China.
Ghana should not be compared to Zambia as well, because Ghana, has vast oil reserves that it will use to pay back those huge loans. On the other hand Zambia only has dwindling copper at the moment. Other resources are just a pipe dream at the moment.
Wanzelu look in mirror before calling someone ‘fake’
First of all, I don’t think much of this Dr Makasa, but to call him a phony (fake) is scraping the borrow of decency.
Ghana ‘s reserves are NOT any better than Zambia and certainly. I remember reading that by 1990 (google that) their borrowing had exceeded $1.3 trillion dollars. Now I don’t have any numbers to back myself up but zambia’s borrowings have never escalated to such lengths. I think you are living in in 18th century if you think Ghana are doing that much better than Zambia by any stretch.
This Dr, also talked of an understanding of China, a communist state whose trade is fragmented and run by a group of wise men, hence their communist state.Hardly a comparison was it?
Sorry could help but dive in
Thanks
the “borrow of decency” blimey – I gotta get back to school. Whatever that is! If it’s good I am it!
The level of ignorance in Zambia is unsustainable also.
Well said.
It explain how PF came to power.
After all, Hon. Kambwili put it in a simple way: “…only mentally retarded should have believed electoral gimmicks…”
this useless girl speaks non sense, this mushota bitch
What a circus!!
I have to conclude that Mushota is a person who knows what exactly is happening in Zambia but conveniently ignores facts to back an uncle with a warped mind with pseudo economic tantrums and innuendoes. I personally think this person has some level of education and knows the truth but the insatiable appetite for attention has led this person to take this position. I promise from today onwards I will not comment on what this person comments. Bye
Good that you are now able to notice this.
Ba LT, You can block my post, but you cannot kill the idea behind it. The truth shall remain the truth. IMF is complaining simply because our country is raising money through bonds.
little brain, little knowledge, uneducated comments.
Do you really think that IMF was going to give loan without accountability?
Dreamer!!!