FINANCE and National Planning Minister Situmbeko Musokotwane has advised his predecessor Ng’andu Magande to appreciate the Government’s great efforts in building the country.
And Dr Musokotwane has explained that the Danish Government’s announced withdrawal of aid to Zambia would not be immediate but would be phased out over a period of three years.
Dr Musokotwane told journalists in Lusaka yesterday that President Rupiah Banda’s Government was managing the country through strategic planning which aimed at sustaining growth and development contrary to assertions by Mr Magande.
Mr Magande was in yesterday’s Post newspaper quoted as saying that Zambia was headed for a bad future because President Rupiah Banda’s Government allegedly lacked planning.
“It is not true that we have failed to plan, we are running the same Government under which Mr Magande served and he should know that the Fifth National Development Plan is a developmental plan which has been concluded.
He said the Government was on the verge of launching the Sixth National Development Plan which he said would be realized.
“Unless Mr Magande is telling us that after leaving office he has forgotten, there is planning,” Dr Musokotwane said.
On the Danish government’s withdrawal of bilateral aid, Dr Musokotwane said all the Danish projects would be completed and reasons given for the cut of aid were that the Danish Government was facing economic hardships because of the global economic crisis.
He said several other countries such as Ireland, the United Kingdom, Portugal and Greece were facing financial challenges because of the economic recession.
[pullquote]“If Mr Magande’s vision was to continue with the dependency syndrome, the vision of the current Government is to graduate Zambia from such dependency. Let him keep his vision as ours is for national planning and sustaining it,” Dr Musokotwane said.[/pullquote]
He, however, said he was happy that Britain had not decided to cut its budgetary support to Zambia.
“Denmark was left in a tight financial corner by the global economic crunch. It is not like Britain which has chosen to maintain Budget assistance to Zambia. Denmark has noted that Zambia’s economy is growing steadily and that was why it had cut its aid,” he said.
He said the opening up of the new mining companies this year would increase Zambia’s copper production in two to five years, thereby significantly growing the national economy to self-sustaining levels.
“If Mr Magande’s vision was to continue with the dependency syndrome, the vision of the current Government is to graduate Zambia from such dependency. Let him keep his vision as ours is for national planning and sustaining it,” Dr Musokotwane said.
[Times of Zambia]
From which University did this Musokotwane graduate from? His views ae very poor compared to Magande. I must say the views are quite unfortunate…
Bwana Musokotwane, what you may consider “great effort” is actually garbage in Mgande’s eyes. For example your refusal to reintroduce windfall taxes on the mines is a pain in the neck to all of us.
You have also imposed strange programmes on the people and you are forcing them to love such works?
That is not possible…. sorry
I like Mr. Magande. I think he made a great contribution to our nation but even he must acknowledge that Dr. Musokotwane is doing a good job.
Kwena Magandi bamusoka, obviously anvela…..attti ours is a plan to graduate from dependency…..let him stay with his vision of dependency….magande a supuka….Post will finish him, I fear for him!!!
Ester Phiri is entering it not the ring to fight this weekend..
It is not a bad idea for Magande and Bo Musokotwane to slug it out on the under-card before ester enters. A non title Unification fight to chose the loser.
Sorry, I meant Ester is entering the ring to fight this weekend in # 5.
It is not a bad idea for Magande and Bo Musokotwane to slug it out on the under-card before ester enters. A non title Unification fight to chose the loser.
Ba magande you shoukld keep quite ,most of the times when you are in power we tend to think we are the best forgeting that there is always some one better than us.Mr Mangande im not an MMD supporter ,but your time was then,we have got more intellgent people in Zambia who can perfom 10 times better than you
All those crying for aid should get this:
“If Mr Magande’s vision was to continue with the dependency syndrome, the vision of the current Government is to graduate Zambia from such dependency. Let him keep his vision as ours is for national planning and sustaining it,” Dr Musokotwane said.”
This is is what Dambisa was lamenting in her book(Dead Aid) and thank God we have a Doctor at MinFin in Musokotwane.With his vision,only hardworkers will reap the benefits while lazy ones will be watching and waiting for the ‘Messiah’ to stuff more money in their pockets without working(Utopia).
Magande wants to be president so that he can repair Zambia Airways and the Post finish…
haaaa! Dr Musokotwane what about all this money you are getting from china? just tell us that the Dans will be replaced by china! the mines are getting all the loot, which self sustaining are you talking about? literally all sectors of the economy money is going to foreign firms – there is almost peanuts to Zero remaining with the locals for reinvestment and growth! hence the continuos web of poverty! the problem with traditional economists they by the principle of “Better Than Nothing”! which has been abandoned in advanced nations, because it only creats Mega rich and Mega poor! SAD.
mahande is intoxicated with the idea that he is the only one who can do a good job an min finance. how can he say the country is headed to bad future when it is recording growth month after month. hands down Musokotwana is doing great
Pa Zed.
Crocodile Magande No Man is Indispensable.Even as a husband you can be displaced before you kick bucket.
You were misled by vuvuzela that you were popular.Should have opened eyes.You dont have to be president to meaningfuly contribute service.
We also had the likes of Ronald Penza who once was voted smartest /Best finance minister in Africa.Whih title has magande got?
Did people improve their meal attendance in his time?
Ka Musokotwane, this was your boss and you never openned your mouchtached mouth against him.Oh even minions have grown wings in MMD
Like someone has said, Mr Magande was a brilliant Minister of Finance. However, his unsuccessful shot at the Presidency has left him bitter and deluded. Listening to most of his interviews, you realise that the man is living in denial and he believes that he is the only ‘intelligent’ man around. He reminds me of the 80s when most of us couldn’t imagine any other leader apart from Kaunda, like the country would collapse if he left. My humble advice to Mr Magande is that let him not believe that he is the only one capable of managing the country, there are thousands of other Zambians betteer than him
In whichever angle you compare the two,MUSOKWATWANE is a dwarf compared to MAGANDE. We should be very frank with issues. The only reason why Musokotwane replaced Magande were political reasons . Its only because Magande challenged Banda for the Presidency. Otherwise, Ba Musokotwane muzizilemekeza. Most Zambians like Magande dearly and wanted him to continue as FNP Minister. Thats why RB is today hated for leaving out Magande & Masebo from his cabinet and replaced them with gabbage. Musokotwane is nowhere near Magande. TIZIKAMBA VAZOONA!
People remove yourself from glorifying individuals. Magande should concentrate on his current life and not sing of yesteryears. This comparing of apples with pears wont get us no-where. Get your warped minds to present day 2011-01-27 and not 2006……..
And we wonder why we have parties such as the MMD almost clocking 27 years
No.16 Rupiaitis, what specific comparisons are you drawing between the two?
Deja vu @14 what is a ‘mouchtached mouth’. Nangu kumponta wati nifyo!!!
Its clear that Dr. Musokotwane is loperating in Magande’s shadow coz each time the later makes a statement he catches the cold. Magande like any other right thinking Zambians with facts can make comments on important national matters. Its surprising that the Danish Embassy were so clear to the point such that even a grade 7 chap can read and understand. Why should this don turned politician sing his master’s voice. Times for treating citizens like fools is long gone. Just heed what IMF and other are urging you to reinstate the windfall tax. God made mineral resources longtime ago and these are wasting assets. Lets make our hay why the sun is shining. Unless you and other bosses are receiving cuts in your offshore accounts. No wonder MMD wants to WIN WIN WIN at all costs. How long are u…
Dont blame Magande but RB. Who like s being associated with failure in this modern age. Magande cannot sit idle and watch these guys mess up things. If One Kansanshi Mine which is not bigger than KCM can pay project to pay US$347m in taxes suppose KCM,Mopani, Lumwana and the Chinese owned mines came on board with such paymets this country can become middle income within 5yrs from now. Its not difficult to manage our national affairs problem is lack of seriousness and accountability. At any given stage cuts all over. When are we going to de serious.In the past it was tightening the belts and copper prices being lower than US$1,000 per ton now whats the story when its all record high US$9,750. There is no plan in place to diversify our economy. Lets learn from Chile under Dictatorship did it
#19 Moustached- With hairs on the mouth like a rat
MY MASTERS VOICE, dENMARK’S AID WAS VERY LITTLE IN A BIG POOL OF DONORS. zAMBIA’S BIGGEST DONORS ARE USA, UK, EU and Japan and all these four have continued to fund projects. But as Musokotwane says our vision should be to get rid of all donors and stand on our own. Only unemployed kaponya’s like you and deja vu want donor aid to continue forever and so that you can remain in so-called diaspora working as sweepers, factory workers or even worse cleaning old people’s amatako
Magande plays politics whilst the Doc plays professionalism. That’s why Magand talks about windfall tax as a way out of poverty. The attention to business world over is not to milk the businesses but to make them sustainable.i .e. the business cash inflows should exist for a very long and not the short term benefits. Kansanshi mine would not have decided to reinvest USD1billion(25% of the 2010 national budget) in Trident mine if they did not think sustainability and if the GRZ only thought in the short term. Trident mine shall employ about 2,000 direct zambian workers and many spill over jobs and businesses. Kansanshi also trains a lot of Zambians at universities across the globe. The mine also contributes heavily to our treasury. Should we kill it because of short term…
chimbwi pakulila
# 23 The TruuutH, stop using derogatory words like your last word in your posting. You call others names but you sound worse than them! Dr. Musokotwane was my lecturer at UNZA and the man is dull and lacks imagination, he could not even motivate his students in the style of Prof. Seshamani, ask any of his former students. # 14 Deja Vu is right, this man only got this job because from the passing of LPM, Magande did not believe that RB is the best man for the presidency! True to his view we have had drama in 2 years, i.e. increased his own salary, stopping of the windfall tax, selling Zamtel, purchase of mobile hospitals, shooting of youths in Mongu, tempering with trade unions, asking donnors to pack their bags and go, etc. With all this confusion, it is no wonder the Danish jumped out!
Her Ladyship @26, the Danish and other donors are experiencing their own financial problems and would pull out on pretext that a third world governement is corrupt. That is not however is not to say we don’t have corrupt leaders…we do and so do they!!!!!! We should not just take what donors say as gospel truth. Transparency International measures corruption through the so called CPI or Corruption Perceptions Index. Basically it measures, “[…] the perceived levels of public-sector corruption in a given country and is a composite index, drawing on different expert and business surveys.
If we as Zambians shout the loudest that we are corrupt, that is what others will think of us. There are 77 other countries worse than us on that index but their don’t paint their country black.
#26, very true but we have scored a lot of success with RB in two years too, like opening mines, opening schools, opening new hospitals, completing malls, upgrading the face of Lusaka, increasing the countries GDP, investment opportunities, creating stronger bilateral relations, withdrawing bit bit by bit from donor dependency, selling Zanaco making it a success story, yes there is bad, but there is a lot of good. RB is not completely bad we should be balanced in our criticism, accept positives and at same time highlight bad. A leader should never think he is the only intelligent person, and has answers to all our problems, a leader should embrace humbleness so we exalt him. My 50cents on your contribution.
No 16 do us a favour and draw up the parameters to use on the two people. don’t suprise me that you have none
Hey I was listening the the BBC program focus on Africa two weeks ago where a representative of the Swedishh government was asked why they where cutting Aid to Zambia. He very clearly siad the reason was because the Zambian government was tolerating corruptions and had lost focus of the goal to rid corruption out of government. SO please Dr Musokotwane spare us your stories of the economic recession being the reason why Denmark has cut Aid. It is obvious that it is for the same reason that Sweden has. If it was because of the economic recession why are they not cutting aid to other countries other than Zambia? Is it that maybe Zambia is at the bottom of their priority list. I wonder why that would be so………………. the levels of corruption I would guess!!
No 24 Objective where have you been all this time. this site has been starved of that thinking. that is the way we should think. and you are certainly correct. that position is held by many experts. it time the majority of the population stops thinking like employees but like employers, innovators, business owners
True, the Zambian economy is recording impressive economic achievents that we all must appreciate regardless of which political party we belong. This is not to disregard possible gains from windfall tax had it been re-introduced, but that it should not deter our macro-picture of the total economic performance.
Kwacha a Situmbeko!!!!!!!
iwe musokotwane..don’t bury ur head in the snad and you ahev failed us terribly as compared to PN Magande Hon..
My concern about these stories is that we are always availed the rebuttal and not the original story to comment upon. The Post Newspaper has become a mouth piece for most failed politicians who are given publicity whenever they have something to say against the government. Why don’t these Ministers use the same conduit for their rebuttals? The impression the world gets, is that this is government propaganda. In the western world, both sides of an opinion are given coverage through the same media outlet. I look forward to that day when every media outlet will be balanced in their approach to news.
On this matter, however, I agree with the learned Dr Musokotwane. Magande wants to keep us neo-colonised!
No.16 Rupiaitis, You have been challenged twice to give us parameters of your comparison and you go mute!! But I am not surprised because this is the tendency of most bloggers: yap first and think later
Magande has been left on a “No Mans Land “He got mislead by Fred M’membe.
We know M’membe funded his Political Party, hoping that he would gain momentum in Southern Province and divert to join PF to create a strong opposition against MMD, thus leave UPND in dire situation.
The former Finance Minister has failed completely to capitalise on his dead Political Party. He also needs to show us his Manifesto, so that Zambians can judge comparatively.
It surprises me that, the some of the issues that he is criticizing are the programs that he initiated which MMD have continued to enhance for completion. Musokotwane has blended what Magande left with New Ideas.
The ploy by Fred M’membe has failed and the big looser from all this is Magande.
Magande + Membe + Nchito = Zambian Airways Scandle
why are we crying that aid is cut to Zambia, whatever the reason that has made the danish to stop giving aid to Zambia, the truth is that we need to start depending on ourselves than donor, the dependance syndrome should come to an end, when this happens donors will even start respecting us. ni chaiwa
” He said the opening up of the new mining companies this year would increase Zambia’s copper production in two to five years, ”
And where are copper prices going to be in 3 to 5 years, Minister Musokotwane? And how does that matter when the mines are in foreign hands and don’t have to accurately list their earnings so they can be taxed? Why isn’t ZCCM-IH *right now* receiving the dividends that are due to the government? As a former non-executive director of ZCCM-IH, you are in an excellent position to comment on this.
hmmm No 40 MrK if you have enough money no one stops you from buying/opening up mines. If you want Gov to own mines on behalf of the citizens like in the ZCCM era please dont use my tax.
I think Magande is right about what he said! In as much as we want to stand and depend on our own, we are far away from achieving that and Musokotwane lucks objectivity in this! Which country has lived without AID? Danish had excellent Education and Capacity building programmes that Musokotwane’s croones benefited from!
Dependence or Independence does not really matter,its only a bonus though that one is self reliant, because then one would have a say on a lot of issues,what matters most is the disposition we portray to the outside world,for what good can come out of a self reliant but corrupt nation?So ba bwana musokotwane,lets strike a balance,while we try to wean ourselves from donor dependence,we should also emphasise on the need to reduce on the corruption levels. Lets aim to inspire the donors even in our self reliant state,because i honestly believe that even at a 101% state of reliance,we will still need others for sustenance.Quit this preoccupation of establishing who’s better btwn Mag & Mus,let the track records speak for themselves,leave the squabbling to those who are not busy.