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Zambia: Country Has a Limited Amount of Financial Resources
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The Times of Zambia (Ndola)
EDITORIAL
25 March 2008
Posted to the web 25 March 2008
Ndola
IT hardly needs emphasising the fact that Zambia, as an emergent economy, has at her disposal a limited amount of financial resources for so many areas of expenditure.
The national budgets prepared by the ministry of Finance and National Planning are carefully laid-out plans about how the Government intends to deploy the limited resources for effective use.
In each Budget presented, the Government has never had all the money it needs to meet the numerous recurrent and capital expenditure obligations.
The little that is available is parceled out in such a manner that for all areas of concern, the Government would at least receive something.
This state of affairs means that the financial resources that the Government releases for various obligations is a precious commodity that has to be carefully used for the intended purposes.
For this precious commodity to be of benefit to the people of Zambia, every Ngwee of these resources should be utilised in the intended manner.
This imposes an obligation on those charged with responsibility to disburse the financial resources to do so in a prudent an timely manner.
It cannot be denied that going by the past record, this is one area which the country has not done well. Hence concerns being raised by Transparency International Zambia.
From the evidence that has come out now and again, substantial amounts of public money meant for development projects has ended up being misapplied or in the wrong hands.
It does not really matter which, because it is all academic as long as the money does not end up where it was intended.
Zambia is a developing country and the development process can only be effectively supported with prudent use of financial resources.
High integrity and transparency in the use of national resources will also go a long way to garner and sustain support from cooperating partners for our development agenda.
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Now that the Budget has been approved, money for various recurrent and capital projects will soon be released.
There is need to put in place a set of penalties which will act as a deterrent for those intending to abuse Government finances for their own gains.
The guidelines and penalties for the handling of Government money should be such that they send a clear message of where the Government and the people of Zambia stand on this issue.
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