By Staff Reporter
FDD leader Edith Nawakwi argues that she has workable alternatives to President Hakainde Hichilema’s offers, in response to the President’s challenge for opposition leaders to provide alternative programmes to his, arguing that he can actually open up Zambia economically without having to lick his lips.Speaking with Daily Revelation, Nawakwi said the IMF programme the UPND administration is pursuing will not work because of what she described as the IMF’s impossible demand of asking the government to band together bilateral creditors with the private people Zambia owed “kaloba.”
She urged the President not to pin his hopes so much on the IMF.
“Ba yama, ba kateka twalimitemwa (uncle Hichilema, we love you) more than even the IMF. Those international movement of famine, they move it from one country to another will not give us the money for the simple reason that they duped the minister of Finance and whoever was structuring this proposal to put all creditors in one basket,” Nawakwi said, arguing that loans gotten through Eurobond were not the same as loans obtained bilaterally with other countries.
She said the IMF under the G 20 framework have told the administration to negotiate with those Zambia got “kaloba” from and bilateral lenders as one and that these terms must be equal.
“Which person you got kaloba from will accept to be paid at the same rate as that of country or multilateral institution?” Nawakwi asked.
She said the IMF framework will not work and the government should just tell the IMF that they are not able to get the creditors to agree on a common platform, saying the administration should leave the private creditors aside by going to the bilaterals and multilaterals starting with China.
Nawakwi said it was of no consequence for the President to say that “we are all queuing to see China ” because Zambia is a special friend to China and should in exchange ask them to resume some of the frozen projects like the Masaiti Dam which were already approved but cancelled by his government.
“After all IMF is not coming on board just riot and say I will revive the projects with China (and) you will see how they will start running around. People have no negotiating strategy so I am giving them a strategy,” she said.
She said the President claimed to have come up with pledges totaling $8 billion, which she said was excellent, but wondered when they will be actualised, saying the government should isolate such promises by focusing on those most interested by promising them incentives, which she said will kick start activity in the country, rather than a situation where the President seemed to be moving from one pledging meeting to another without actualisation.
Nawakwi urged President Hichilema not to focus at those higher calibre investors like the Bezos as there were other investors from several continents who have money which could be actualised in a very short time.
She also said that the government says that they have orders for soya beans from China, and she was aware that there was no money to give to FRA to buy soya beans therefore farmers must be told to receive promisory notes for soya beans through FRA, whereby FRA will collect the soya beans and send to China and at the time of collecting the commodity they will open a letter of credit.
“Him he is saying I have no money, therefore I am giving him an alternative. The alternative is they ask buyers in China to open letters of credit and then FRA works with the farmers on a non-cash basis. We agree that we can given them receipts of promissory notes. Once a letter of credit is opened, that’s cash you go to the bank to collect cash. You just need one or two ship loads of that and you start trading in beans,” Nawakwi said, arguing that FRA can still manage to export the soya beans on behalf of the farmers. “If you work cleverly you can still open up the Zambia economy without actually licking your lips.
On the administration’s claims of health officials stealing drugs from hospitals, Nawakwi said it was callous and irresponsible for President Hichilema since he took over government not to have visited the only cancer facility in the country.
She said when his minister was ranting about shortage of medicines, the President should have asked her when exactly she bought the same medicine and where she took it, arguing that they are covering their “ineptitude” in pretending that the other people are at fault, including the medical professionals.
Nawakwi urged President Hichilema to ask his female ministers to go to the cancer center and do mammograms, mentioning Health minister Sylvia Masebo and Information minister Chushi Kasanda specifically, while urging the President, the minister of Finance and the Bank of Zambia Governor to go to the cancer center and do a CT scan, saying they will discover that the entire University Teaching Hospital has no functioning MRI and refers patients to Maina Soko.
She said, however, the whole of last April, the MRI at Maina Soko out of use on account of being overwhelmed, which she said meant that in the hands of government there was no functioning CT Scan and MRI and other equipment, including non availability of medicines to illnesses like cancer in government institutions in Lusaka.
“I am talking about Lusaka. I don’t even want to talk about Kitwe because their CT scan died many years ago,” Nawakwi said. “Now when you are accusing doctors of heinous crime medicine is not just panado. Medicine includes diagnostic equipment.”
She said she was therefore proposing recommendations and alternatives to the challenges.
Nawakwi urged the President to stop talking from ignorance, saying the Ministry of Health has a facility called NHIMA and could use the proceeds from that institution to do cash flows to get new equipment on account of NHIMA or the hospitals.
She said the people who were contributing to NHIMA were public servants and deserve to benefit from their contributions instead of private clinics benefiting.
“Imwe ba President naba Masebo is it normal that when I go to UTH they give me a prescription for a full blood count in private laboratories? You get there there is a NHIMA accredited medical staff and at that desk authorisation is instant. These are tests we can do at UTH. We have a very good lab with doctors there. Some of these private labs don’t even bring certified results, standards are very low,” Nawakwi said, arguing that UTH has all the qualified staff but the only problem is that those given to administer public affairs “niba mbwelenge. They don’t think.”
She said these were things the President should be telling Zambians about and not backing what she described as a lie from his minister.
Nawakwi further charged that the country was in a period called stagflation, and wondering if the President has ever heard of a term in economics called quantitative easing, which requires pumping liquidity into the economy instead of the quantitative tightening she said Bank of Zambia Governor Dr Denny Kalyalya was doing of tightening liquidity by increasing the reserve ratio, something she said will siphon money out of the economy and thereby strangle the small scale businesses who are supposed to create jobs.
“Ba kateka IMF tayakese umfweni kuno ba yama (Mr President IMF will not come, listen here uncle). Do some quantitative easing.” Nawakwi said. ” We who are telling you have time to think which you don’t have. Uyu minister comes and says oh baiba amataba. The other one comes ‘oh they have stolen medicine’. So you don’t have time to think clearly so listen to some of us who have some space to think.”
She urged that the monetary and fiscal policies should be oriented towards the creation of jobs.
Nawakwi urged President Hichilema to go to the World Bank to ask for emergency funding as the country was just coming from Covid and other natural disasters, saying he must use the line he says he has to these people by pushing for some of these agenda.
She also said that given the Ukraine war and shortages of food in the world, the African Development Bank has emergency agricultural funds, saying if the President had a minister who thinks they would have already spoken to the AFDB for emergency funds which she said were just grants for countries like Zambia.
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