• Bank of Zambia has for a long time responded more to political pressure than exercise its mandate independently.
• The security of tenure of Bank of Zambia Governor and his deputies is very critical.
• Now the Bank of Zambia can stand firm and advice government professionally.

An Economist says President Hakainde Hichilema’s decision to sign into law the Bank of Zambia Bill of 2022 will enable the Central Bank to act in the interest of the economy.
Mathews Muyembe told Money FM News in an interview that with this law in place, the Central Bank Governor will be comfortable to exercise his powers to ensure that the country has a more stable economic environment.
Mr. Muyembe noted that Bank of Zambia has for a long time responded more to political pressure than exercise its mandate independently, hence the singing of the Bill into law is a timely move by the Head of State and government.
“This is a timely move by government and our Head of State. The fact that he has signed into law, the security of tenure of Bank of Zambia Governor and his deputies is very critical, because we understand the role the Bank of Zambia plays with regards to monitoring fiscal policy or exchange rate issues. So no more can you manipulate exchange rate or even issues of money supply or printing more money because of some political arena or trying to appease the masses.”
“Now the Bank of Zambia can stand firm and advice government professionally and at the same time put their foot down where they feel some of the decisions or policies or whatever it might be may not be in the interest of the economy,” Mr. Muyembe stated.
He noted that due to political cause, there have been fragilities in the country’s macro-economic environment such as over borrowing among others.
“We are happy, generally everyone is satisfied by this intervention by government, specific intervention by government is critical, such that we will have sanity with our monetary system as opposed to what happened in the past, where we have had a lot of mischief to which Bank of Zambia could not say no to politicians,” he said.
President Hakainde Hichilema has signed into law the Bank of Zambia Bill of 2022.

The Bank of Zambia Act number 5 of 2022 will among other issues address the security of tenure for the Bank Governor and the two Deputies, meant to protect them from political influence.
According to section 13(7) of the Act, “the President shall remove the Governor or Deputy Governor from office if the tribunal recommends to the President that the Governor or Deputy Governor should be removed.”