Operation Young Vote (OYV) executive director Guess Nyirenda insists that Zambia’s economy has not stabilized because millions of young people are wallowing in abject poverty.
In an interview yesterday, Mr. Nyirenda said the sweeping pronouncement by Finance Minister Felix Mutati that the economy is stable is unjustifiable because there are no trickle down effects on the man-on-the-street.
Mr. Nyirenda said the Zambian kwacha might be seen to be competing well against the major convertible currencies but things are expensive in Zambia, adding that it becomes outrageous to celebrate that the kwacha is performing when life is expensive to the common Zambian.
Mr. Nyirenda added that the failure by Government to buy maize from farmers at a good price in the just ended farming season and the nation’s protests about the procurement of forty two fire extinguishing trucks at the expense of taxpayers’ money is sufficient evidence that Zambia’s economy unstable.
Mr. Nyirenda further stated that if the economy was stable as insinuated by minister of Finance Felix Mutati, the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) would not have bought white maize at that slavery wage from the farmers.
“Zambia’s economy has not stabilized because millions of young people are wallowing in abject poverty” Nyirenda said
The Procurement of the 42 extinguishing trucks has become a thorny issue in Zambia of which many stakeholders have raised eyebrows.
Some 80% of Zambians live off some salaula type economy of low grade survival.
Njala ya nyokola mwa visionless Lungu~sha economy.
The Skeleton Key
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Go back to school..there is always a difference between economic growth and economic development…It is possible that an economic can stabilise or there could be economic growth but without it having a trickle-down effect.
So was Mr Nyirenda simply “Guess-ing”?
Regardless of the “difference between economic growth and economic development”, what matters is what brings bread on the table for the majority of Zambians.
Get the point, iwe @HIBALWA, people are starving, that is the point. And therefore, Zambia is not well of as stated by Mutati.
Yes, some progress is going on, but until that effect is dripped down to the ordinary Zambia.
There is a tendency by top GRZ officials to say things they don’t really mean. Is it true that Mutati can not see that the poverty levels are alarming in our compounds and villages?Is it fear of one Chagwa? to say what he wants to hear?