By MAIMBOLWA MULIKELELA –

THE Economic Association of Zambia (EAZ) has called for prudent management of resources and maintenance of high level of strictness to ensure that the needs of the country are confined within manageable levels.
EAC president Isaac Ngoma said it was important for the Government to take prudent management of resources in view of the anticipated changes in the budget.
He said this in an interview here on the sideline of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)/World Bank Spring meetings.
Mr Ngoma said his association anticipates that the 2015 budget would be modified to reflect the current developments taking place in the economy.
Mr Ngoma said the Government should be mindful that in the short to medium-term, the country has huge commitments like the tripartite elections and the Constitution-making process.
Mr Ngoma said it was critical to understand that the gap for Government to borrow had narrowed and external aid to the budget had reduced.
“We expect the Government to revise the numbers in the budget for both economic and social sector. External aid inflows have shrunk and we don’t expect to borrow money because the space for debt construction has narrowed and we are in fact supposed to be reducing on borrowing,”he said.
Mr Ngoma said certain things should be forgone to meet the modified budget.
“We must appreciate that there are some challenges within the economy, deficit which we have to deal with which has seemly widened beyond the initial projections and secondly it’s the constraints revenue inflows due to some challenges that we are facing in the economy.
And lastly the commitment like the infrastructure expenditure as well as issues that have a spillover effect from last year such as the elections commitment to the FISP and the maize mop-up exercise with the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) and those had effect on the fiscal
deficit,” Mr Ngoma said.
He said the country was also faced with the devaluation of the Kwacha against the United State dollar, thereby making it difficult to return sufficient foreign exchange within the economy and that has the implication on the retention of adequate foreign reserve or import
cover.
Mr Ngoma said the budgetary provision on revenue and expenditure side was being upset therefore threatening the prospect of meeting the budgetary targets.
He said revenue inflows in the domestic economy had been constrained and demands were high on the expenditure.
This means that the Government must make some modification to the budget for 2015 and this would require some revision of numbers both revenue and expenditure side.