Times of Zambia | My economic manifesto

Published On December 30, 2015 » 1748 Views» By Davies M.M Chanda » Business, Columns

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AS we conclude this year, I have decided to use an abridged version of an article which we featured on January 14, this year.
This was less than a week before the Presidential elections.
I wrote then that I had looked at some of the economic issues which were being espoused by most of the 11 presidential candidates in the January 20, 2015 election.
To advance the debate, I had pushed for some of the economic provisions in the 12th manifesto which I proposed.
If I were a candidate, my manifesto on economic issues would mostly have consisted of a mix of the provisions from the 11 candidates, but the difference would have been in the approach and priority.
Usually, political parties advance the same causes using different approaches and emphasis.
On other times, because candidates want to impress, they forget that some causes can only be stressed at the expense of another – thereby making it impossible to achieve both.
For instance, the provision of generous incentives to the investors are in the short-term, a sure way of foregoing revenue from them in form of taxes.
Such promises are mere tricks to delude voters into voting for the particular candidate because the promises are contradictory.
Since I was not standing, my manifesto provisions should have been much more realistic than for those who had offered themselves to serve this country.
On my list of priorities would have been the agriculture sector which I felt and still feel, if well handled, could contribute to the national economy more than the mining sector.
At the risk of sounding political, I would say any government’s neglect of the agriculture sector condemns the rural inhabitants – most of whom are small-scale farmers – to perpetual beggars of food.
Introduction of the Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP) marked the reversal of the situation and revived the countryside.
Successive governments thereafter have done well by continuing with FISP, but the best approach towards the sector was in the Patriotic Front (PF) manifesto.
The party pledged to partition the country into agricultural zones and provide support to farmers according to the comparative advantage of each region.
What this means is that areas whose climatic and other conditions support the growth of maize, for instance, are supported with inputs for maize while those areas which are suitable for other crops receive support for growth of those particular crops.
There is no better way of distributing national wealth than via a comprehensive decentralisation by creating new districts and suburban areas and the current administration has done well in that area.
The surest way of taking development and civilisation closer to the people is through the creation of more districts and what I called civilisation centres.
Comprehensive infrastructure development projects should now be concentrated in the new districts to transform them into fully-fledged towns.
Each new district should be linked to the provincial capital via a tarred road while facilities like modern hospitals, Secondary schools, colleges and others, should follow.
Generally however, my view was and still is that, government should have a stake in the running of the economy and should retain some semblance of shareholding in the mines and other strategic entities.
The mixed economy could be the best way of ensuring that government shares in both successes and failures of the market.
For the mining sector, the vehicle for that is already in place in the name of ZCCM -Investment Holdings, which has strategic shares in almost all mining firms.
All that is needed is to increase the shareholding to meaningful levels.
Similar arrangements should be extended to other sectors and to maintain some levels of price stability for mealie meal, the government should directly run some milling plants.
Notably this item, which was also advanced by President Edgar Lungu during the campaign, is being implemented.
My version of the government milling plants would directly be fed by the Food Reserve Agency and pass on the benefits of the lower prices of maize the agency offers.
For the transport sector, similar arrangements could be created by coming up with public firms to operate a fleet of mini-buses and buses, which will compete with the private sector.
Given the current amounts of the public resources being gobbled up by the public service workers in the country, there was need to candidly discuss with their leaders on the need to extend the wage freeze even beyond this year.
This is because currently, a few citizens who make up the public service workforce account for more than 52 per cent of the total annual budget for 14 million Zambians.
I received very strong reactions on this one!
My view was that the imbalance, which was compounded by the supernormal increase of salaries in 2012 in some cases by more than 200 per cent, was too huge to be ignored.
The postponement of salary increases for this category of workers for some time will ensure a healthy relationship between the public service wage bill and the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).