Tue, 01 Aug 2017 13:23:21 +0000
By MUKOSELA KASALWE
NEVERS Mumba insists that he is not a liar and that Zambia’s foreign debt stands at U$30 billion based on his research findings and analysis and challenged the Ministry of Finance to counter the findings.
He said based on his preliminary figures, in 2011 when the Patriotic Front government took office, Zambia’s external debt stood at $3.5 billion (15 percent of GDP).
Dr Mumba claimed that the figure had ballooned to about four times and that with the International Monetary Fund already in negotiations with the government for a $1.6 billion bailout, they needed to know the truth if the nation had the capacity to repay.
The former MMD leader said he did not claim perfection in his research and that there was a chance that there could have been gaps on the part of his information.
However, Ministry of Finance Head of media and public relations Chileshe Kandeta disputed Dr Mumba’s figure and clarified that the correct position was that Zambia’s debt stood at U$ 7 billion.
Dr Mumba said the figure by Finance Minister Felix Mutati was not true and that there was confusion among Zambians on what was the true figure.
‘‘Considering that there is much confusion among Zambians on what the correct debt position is, we did our own research and concluded that the figure of $7.2 billion Mr Mutati gave is simply not true,’’ he said Dr Mumba said based on evidence gathered from a variety of sources, he found that the true figure appeared to be at least four times larger than stated. He said preliminary figures, based on information in the public domain, showed that at a minimum, the true debt position was about $30 billion.
