Zambia’s creditors should give Zambia time to grow because at the moment it is doing all the right things when it comes to the issue of debt restructuring, International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Geogieva has said.
Dr Geogieva during the Town Hall session at the University of Zambia (UNZA) said that the Zambian government had made positive strides and was doing the right things, calling on creditors to give the UPND administration more space to grow the economy.
She called on the creditors to do their part on debt restructuring because the government had so far done a commendable job in meeting some of the conditionalities for the IMF deal to succeed.
She also commended the government for making decisive decisions of transferring funds to ventures like education which she said was cardinal.
She said that the Zambians had the leadership it deserved which was keen on fighting corruption and bringing sanity in the governance of the country.
“I must commend government for removing things like subsidies on certain commodities which benefitted wealthy people at the expense of the poor who could not afford such as education,” Dr Geogieva said.
Dr Geogieva said that she was happy that subsidies on certain sectors were removed because they only benefitted a few individuals in society.
She said that the IMF was not the one that wrote the programmes for the country but that it at times made tough recommendations a bid to help the respective countries.
She said the IMF had learnt from past experiences where its programs had failed because they were not owned by the countries that needed help.
Dr Georgieva said that Zambia needed to diversify its economy and not just depend on the production of Copper.
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