IMF TALKS ON COURSE

Wed, 20 Sep 2017 10:51:43 +0000

By Aaron Chiyanzo

NEGOTIATIONS between Zambia and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are likely to be finalised by the end of this year, the Ministry of Finance has announced.

Permanent Secretary for Economic Management and Finance, Mukuli Chikuba said engagements with the IMF had reached an advanced stage and that most of the structural issues had been addressed.

Mr Chikuba explained that most of the structural issues which were holding back the deal, bordered on agriculture subsidies, among others.

He pointed out that the work that was remaining to close the IMF package was around spending plans for the rest of this year, including government’s borrowing plan.

Mr Chikuba was speaking during the launch of a public dissemination of the recently published Economic Stabilisation and Growth Programme and the 2018- 2020 Mid-Term Expenditure Framework in Lusaka yesterday.

Mr Chikuba said engagements with the IMF would resume next month alongside the World Bank and IMF annual general meeting and that all structural issues had already been addressed.

“The engagements with the fund are pretty advanced. What we have done this far is based on the documents that have been launched today. We have addressed most of the structural issues and agreed to them.

“We had a lag in terms of how far we go because we had a lot of work to do around agriculture subsidies and all those issues. What is remaining is the spending plan for the rest of 2017, including borrowing plans going forward,” Mr Chikuba said.

Meanwhile, permanent secretary for Budget, Pamela Kabamba disclosed during the same meeting that the external debt to finance a fiscal deficit of K 6 billion, from January up to the middle of 2017 was only K1.3 billion.

Ms Kabamba explained that from the 2017 budgetary revenue collection of K20 billion and expenditure of K26 billion, the rest of the funds to satisfy the deficit were acquired domestically.

And the secretary to the Treasury, Fredson Yamba assured that resources would be well rationalised among the key sectors and preparations were on course.