. Mutati

THE deficit in power generation in Zambian has narrowed down from 50 per cent in 2015 to about 10 per cent this year, Finance Minister Felix Mutati has said.
And the Zambian government has reduced the percentage allocation towards civil servant emoluments to about 51 per cent of the locally generated resources to free up funds for development.
Mr Mutati said that the government was addressing the issue of power deficit and from 2018  it may break even  and start recording surplus in power generation.
He said this here when he addressed investors during the just-ended International Monetary Fund (IMF)/World Bank annual meetings on Friday.
Mr Mutati said from a deficit of 50 per cent in 2015 when the country was hit with incessant outages due to the low generation capacity because of the low water levels the deficit was now at 10 per cent.
He said that given the several measures which have been introduced to diversify energy sources and increase total output the deficit could be wiped out.
Mr Mutati said that the optimism was as the result of the many projects in hydro, thermal and solar power production which had been embarked on.
He said that Zambia was part of the countries which would implement the Zambia Tanzania Kenya Power interconnector to network power supply in the region and beyond.
This would ensure that countries with surplus power supply could freely export to deficit countries from Cape to Cairo.
And Finance Permanent Secretary Mukuli Chikuba said the Government had managed to reduce the percentage of the civil servant emoluments from 60 per cent of the total revenue collected locally to now 51 per cent.
The significance of that is that more resources had been freed up for the investment into the development sectors.
Mr Chikuba said that was achieved through the 2017 national budget since there was no salary increment for the public workers for that year.
To ensure compliance with the labour laws the government had engaged the labour movements through the collective bargaining process on the matter as it should be.