THE imminent reduction in budgetary allocation this year to the Sports Ministry should begin to ring bells in the ears of all national sport associations.
Sports Minister Vincent Mwale recently announced that the change in mineral royalty tax will see Government’s revenue in the 2015 national budget reduce by five per cent.
Mwale predicted that his ministry is likely to be the most affected because of the pending reduction in income.
This will mean some of the programmes lined up this year may suffer once the revised mining taxes were implemented by July 1 after Parliament approval.
Government recently announced the revised mining taxes which saw the mineral royalty tax reduced to nine per cent from 20 percent while corporate tax which was scrapped off in January is now at 30 percent.
So this is a wakeup call for all sports bodies to come up with other means of generating their own revenue unlike just waiting for ‘alms’ from the National Treasury.
Therefore, Sports Council of Zambia (SCZ) chairperson Mwamba Kalenga’s call on sport bodies to come up with various innovations in raising resources to finance their various programmes is timely.
In this country, there are some associations which I have never heard talk about how they intended to raise money for the programmes apart from always crying to Government through SCZ annually and the results from such organisations are as disastrous as their poor management skills.
Because of the type of some of these leaders occupying positions in associations, sponsors cannot even be enticed to partner with them.
However, there are some organisations that have been surviving without Government aid for a long time as they are capable of wooing the corporate world to support their programmes.
Some of a few sport bodies that are able to execute almost all their programmes without sending a begging bowl to Government Complex are Zambia Golf Union (ZGU), Zambia Motor Sport Association (ZMSA), Zambia Amateur Swimming Union (ZASU), Zambia Cricket Union (ZCU) and Chess Federation of Zambia (CFZ).
There are other organisations like the Football Association of Zambia (FAZ), Zambia Amateur Athletics Association (ZAAA) and the Zambia Judo Association (ZJA) sometimes manage to attend to some programmes using support from the corporate world, though for major assignments, they still look up to Government.
I think some of the innovations which all organisations should embrace include treating their respective sporting disciplines like a business through some intensive marketing strategies.
The corporate world should also seize this opportunity to market themselves through partnerships with sporting bodies.
It is my hope that all sport disciplines will continue to thrive despite this pending reduction to the Sports Ministry. For your usual contributionse-mail:malungaf@gmail.com