25 November 2008
editorial
THE economic uncertainty that Zambia is going through has attracted much comment and theories from all quarters of society as to why there is a slow down.
Comments have come from politicians of all shades, economists and virtually every player has had something to say on the matter and from the look of things the economic down-turn will continue to occupy centre-stage for some time to come.
All well-meaning commentators have generally agreed that the genesis, and if not the main cause of the source of the slump, is the global meltdown and Zambia being part of the global village is feeling the effects.
Experts have spelt out some of the effects as the worldwide financial crunch, fall in copper prices, the rise in agricultural inputs prices such as fertiliser because of global food deficits.
For the weakening of the Kwacha, an explanation has been given that short-term portfolio investors have withdrawn their cash from Zambia and this has created a shortage of convertible currencies such as the dollar.
In this scenario, one cannot also rule out currency speculators having a hand who sometimes create pressure by encouraging panic buying.
Now, all this is clear and has been commonly agreed upon by economic observers including local experts and it is therefore surprising that some politicians have chosen to deliberately mislead the public by heaping blame on the Government.
It is political dishonesty to pretend that they understand what is going on better than experts and attribute the economic down-down to leaders currently in the Government.
And as has been said before, these political critics are not offering any solutions even though they want the public to believe that they understand what is going on.
The way to resolve this problem is, first of all, to stop the blame game and then join hands in finding solutions to the various problems that this global meltdown has brought on Zambia.
There is no easy solution to this but where there is a will, there is always a way and Zambians must put aside their political affiliations and tackle this problem as one. As is being suggested by business leaders what Zambia needs is a strategy of dealing with the fall-out from the financial difficulties that started with the American sub prime mortgage fiasco.
Anyone who is fishing for local explanations in the current Government for this worldwide problem is simply being dishonesty and cannot fool too many Zambians.
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