The Zambian Government has assured the international community of its commitment to advance human capital development and empowerment of people with economic opportunities.
The Ministry of National Development Planning says this will be done through social safety nets, as espoused in the Seventh National Development Plan (7NDP).
Ministry of National Development Planning Permanent Secretary in charge of Development Planning Chola Chabala was speaking on behalf of Minister Alexander Chiteme at the 8th Annual Ministerial Roundtable on Social Safety Nets: Improving economic opportunities and human capital in changing world of work, at the 2019 Spring Meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington DC USA.
The Minister says social safety nets is important to the Zambian Government.
“We appreciate that poverty and vulnerability does not only affect the ability to put food on the table but also extends to access to certain essential services and citizens opportunities to be self-sustaining and contribute to economic growth,” Mr. Chiteme said.
The minister explained that human capital development was a key catalyst to harnessing demographic dividend.
Mr. Chiteme emphasised the importance of using social safety nets in advancing economic opportunities.
He expressed concern about the widening gap between the labour market demand and the training.
“We are channeling out people from training institutions who are not able to fit into industry and that is perpetuating informalisation of the economy. From most experiences in Africa the informal sector is not broadly covered within the formal social protection schemes,” said Mr. Chabala on behalf of the Minister. “People have to informally contribute …the informal contribution mechanism is not as compiling as it would if one was to be covered through statutory obligation through formal sector employment …the more the economy gets informalised, the more you lose out on comprehensively covering people.”
Meanwhile, speaking at the UN and World Bank co-organised Ministerial meeting on strengthening Resilience to debt vulnerability in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Mr. Chiteme said striking the right balance between development financing and containing debt vulnerability needs an international multifaceted framework. He said such a framework should address the debt vulnerabilities and policy dialogue while taking into account the country specific peculiarities and global perspectives.
He said drivers of debt could be attributed to global and country-specific factors.
“Global factors include commodity prices and global interest rates, while country specific factors include inappropriate fiscal regime, low GDP growth, volatile exchange rate, low institutional quality and political instability in some few cases,” said Mr. Chiteme. “Output shocks in commodities have adversely affected commodity exports and subsequently reduced revenues; weather related shocks, like drought in Zambia, reduced agriculture output, low hydro-energy output which put pressure on revenues through increased imports and the deficits have been covered by borrowing.”
Mr. Chiteme said it was not the fault of African countries that they borrowed but, in some instances, it was due to trade wars between the west and east.
“We have competing priorities in Africa: we need to provide health facilities, safe drinking water, educate our people etc but for us to do this we need financing. We are not borrowing to consume but to invest in our infrastructure and empower our people. We are borrowing to ensure that we have Africa tomorrow that is at the level that is acceptable for our people to live in and have a decent life.”
The Minister called for sustainable financing for developing countries like Zambia to achieve the objectives set out in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
This is contained in a statement issued to Money FM News by Ministry of National Development Planning Spokesperson Chibaula Silwamba.