AGRICULTURE NEEDS MORE FUNDING, SAYS ECONOMIST

Wed, 13 Sep 2017 14:53:23 +0000

By Mailesi Banda

GOVERNMENT should provide more funding to agriculture in the 2018 national budget to propel economic growth, financial analyst Maambo Hamauudu has advised.

Mr. Hamauudu said investing in the agriculture sector would stimulate economic growth since the sector was on a growth path and had more potential to increase economic growth.

He said placing a special emphasis on having resources placed  on activities that would promote economic growth would help the budget perform better and benefit the Zambian people it originally serves.

“Government should invest more in sectors that support economic growth hence I expect the minister of Finance to give more resources to agriculture which is one of the growth areas in the economy and has more potential to contribute to economic growth,” Mr. Hamauudu said.

He also said there must be a visible improvement in the allocation of funds to agriculture because it was a source of livelihood for most Zambians.

Mr. Hamauudu advised the government to consider the Seventh National Development plan as they come up with the 2018 budget.

He said he expected the Finance minister to make pronouncements on how the government would handle the debt that the country owed.

Mr. Hamauudu explained that besides the pronouncements, he expected the government to give a review on how the country had performed in the 2017 national budget which was currently in operation.

“I’m of the opinion that we know what must be done but we need to know why we do not do what must be done in order to attain economic growth and this can only be done through timely budget reviews,” Mr. Hamauudu said.

He called for an emphasis on fiscal discipline by citizens especially from the people in administration, adding that once leaders had fiscal discipline it was going to be easy for citizens to follow suit.

Mr. Hamauudu noted that it would be interesting to find out how ambitions the minister will be in terms of GDP growth and the projected inflation rate for the 2018.