Dear Editor,
IT is important for a Republican President to undertake trips to foreign countries provided such trips are substantially beneficial to Zambia. Kindly note my use of the term “substantially beneficial” as opposed to just beneficial.
The question then becomes; when does a presidential foreign trip become substantially beneficial to Zambia?
Well, from my standpoint, it is when the benefits of undertaking such a trip outweigh the costs. The costs of a foreign trip include the monetary cost of transportation, accommodation, food, allowances for the entourage, etcetera as well as the opportunity cost of travelling abroad instead of attending to domestic matters.
The benefits of a presidential foreign trip in my view include the tangible and the intangible. Tangible benefits are those which can be seen and measured, whereas intangible benefits are those that cannot be seen or measured, and whose existence is a matter of conjecture.
Examples of tangible benefits include bilateral trade agreement with other countries whereby say Angola agrees to import all its chicken requirements from Zambia instead of Brazil or America which may translate to say 20 million metric tonnes over the next 10 years, and in return we agree to buy all our crude oil requirements from Angola, for processing by Indeni.
That is a mutually beneficial bilateral trade agreement that would create jobs in Zambia as well as add to economic growth.
Another key tangible benefit of a presidential foreign trip would be attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) to Zambia in terms of companies from foreign countries coming to establish operations here and employing our people as well as contributing to the national tax basket.
Intangible benefits include networking and creating goodwill between Zambia and other countries.
HH has so far undertaken five foreign trips; to the United States, Scotland, South Africa, Botswana and more recently to DR Congo. All these five trips were to attend summits or conferences.
These being the UN general assembly in the US, COP26 climate summit in Scotland, the Inter-Africa Trade Forum in South Africa, the International Children’s Day Commemoration in Botswana and the Africa Business Forum in DRC.
Summits are essentially meet-and-greet talk shops which only bring about the intangible benefits of networking and goodwill but hardly bring about tangible benefits such as FDI and bilateral trade agreements (BTA). You see, for a President to attract FDI to Zambia, or for relations between two countries to culminate into a BTA, a lot of one-on-one ground work has to be done.
For instance, in the case of FDI, the Zambian mission in say Angola has to identify specific companies that can invest in specific sectors in Zambia and such companies need to be provided with all the information that they need to know about doing business here in terms of Labour laws, economic environment etcetera.
SEAN TEMBO,
PeP President.
