Speaking shortly after his arrival at Kenneth Kaunda International Airport (KKIA) yesterday, the head of state said that the removal of consumption subsidies on fuel will help the poor as the money realised will be channelled to productive sectors of the economy.
President Lungu said: “This is money that will benefit the vulnerable in our society, we want to put this money into the economy.”
While at Comesa, President Edgar Lungu urged members to build on the gains made in the promotion of regional integration in order to accelerate economic growth and sustainable development.
Speaking when he addressed the 19th summit of the COMESA Authority of heads of state and government in Antananarivo, Madagascar yesterday, President Lungu said that it was incumbent upon COMESA member countries to look beyond the region and actively participate in the integration processes at the tripartite and continental levels so as to broaden opportunities for the business communities.
Oh because today they have led to the increase in price of mealie meal which was already unaffordable by the majority of Zambian. Since pf took over power the definition of poor has changed to them because they have stolen and all become big like kambwili. I advise these chimps to seel. Alex mulioleka assistance in defining what poor is. Very sad. Zambians hope you have learned lesson
Nabanuna na pork belly na wine ku COMESA while ifwe we are home fasting nokuchita reconcile.
So can someone tell me the president refused to eat at COMESA because he and the country of Zambia were fasting? All this jovial looking probably drunk 2 shots before landing.
I assume that the poor Lungu is talking about do not use public transport, do not buy food and generally are not in the money economy. Even villagers are not that poor. PF are savaging the poorest of the poor by making their lives miserable. Inflation should be shooting into double digits by the end of this year, and should be over 30% by next year. The well-off spend the least money on basics like food, bus fares and clothes. They spend their money on iPhones, DSTV and restaurant meals.
SLOWLY SLOWLY ZAMBIANS ARE NOW TURNING TO ISLAM BECAUSE INDIANS ARE GIVING FREE FOOD TO ANYONE WHO GOES TO WORSHIP IN MOSQUES!
You mean Lungu can not walk on A TARMAC?? Every time its red carpets? come on this is Stupidity? if the man is serious he better change these old fashion nonsense. be humble. such welcomes would be understood for another head of state not him?? even Obama does not do such rubbish.
Zambians have to change, the cost of ministers, cadres, plus dancing team welcoming the president can be used for other things. when fuel is over $1.30 you are still busy spending? what measures are you putting in place to reduce expenditures?? This man is not serious. STUPIDITY at its fullest..
Is there stacks of money somewhere which was kept for subsidy?
It’s like us here saying I will park my car to save money, so I help my 3rd hungry Zambians back home.
Nabo ba ‘the Poor’ agree to this nonsense.’Mulennya amenshi’ in the next five years ba ‘the Poor’.
This dude has it wrong. How are the poor going to benefit, tell us where these the poor live and how they are going benefit without the well off benefiting even more. Stop lying to the poor and get serious.
Yes it’ll help the poor people in USA. All the money saved from subsidies will be sent to pay for IMF Kaloba. VISIONLESS LUNGU does not feel the pain of the fuel & electricity increases. Here’s what will happen:-
1. Due to high energy costs Companies will have to cut overheads, i.e. retrenchments
2. High fuel & electricity prices mean high cost of production & transportation which will be passed on to the consumer in the form of an expensive end product. Expensive products means less demand. More retrenchments
3. High cost of fertilizer & farming inputs mean poor harvest & that translates to a mealie-meal shortage. That will translate to a higher price of mealie-meal & more misery to poor people
4. Your planned wage freeze coupled with inflation will mean less buying power for the…
CONT’D less buying power for the workers & less business or a weaker economy, i.e. recession
5. There’s a risk that PF-Govt will default on loan payments which will lead to increases in interest rates on debt leading to a rise in debt service costs & start up a spiral effect (like a black hole sucking up a dead star) leading to the Zimbabwenification of Zambia.
We urgently need quality leadership not these riff-ruffs PF has cursed us with.
Haha @maloza that is a classic! Zimbabwenification!!!! There will also be Zim-dollarization of the Kwacha followed by Couponization of efforts…
@ Kalok. It’s true. We have a perfect example from Zim. We now have plenty of Zim economic refugees in Zambia but our leaders don’t want to learn from their mistakes.
Zim doctors, teachers, nurses have turned into prostitutes in Lusaka. Their rates are even lower than those of locals.
1. You kill farming thru removal of subsidies
2. You frustrate manufacturing via high energy prices
3. You have a huge Balance of Payments & end up depending on borrowing from IMF
4. You default making interest rate go up
5. The further kills the economy
6. The Govt prints more money to cover BoPs
7. Kwacha bleeds
8. The chain-reaction starts all over again till implosion.
This is true the poor will benefit by sleeping on empty stomachs, because production and transportation costs shall increase. Remember this increase is marginal to people with money and massive to those without resources.
Absolutely. People with money can opt out of most of the higher costs that Lungu will be pushing on Zambians. They can drive smaller engined cars, eat more rice, install solar power etc. Those who must travel by bus, buy mealie meal, use Zesco tokens etc are stuffed.
cost benefit analysis should have been done. Can PF govt give us the ratio and other related figures otherwise govt is making uninformed decisions and misleading people that the poor will benefit. Why has kambwili not issued the comprehensive statement if the analysis was done? Is it another chimbwi no plan?
Lungu riots are comming i hope your police are strong enough to stop hungry and angry mobs.
I hope the slum dwellers in Mandevu and Kanyama who voted for Lungu are happy to pay more for everything because Lungu claims it is for their benefit. The benefit of better roads that PF gave them is now being taken away with higher transport costs, higher food prices, and higher inflation overall.
The cost of fuel influences the cost of everything else. So when fuel is expensive it doesn’t take a genius to know that everything else will be expensive. Just how do the poor benefit from that????? Don’t even tell us that the money you will save will be put into the economy. We have heard that story before.
These are empty tins who removed subsidies 4 years ago then secretly added them…what has changed now is they have finished all the reserves we had and they thought they were comfortable… now we are paying the price for their incompetence.
Why dont reporters as this bum these questions?
Gratuity and parliamentary allowances will have to increase because MPs will no longer afford to travel comfortably to their constituencies. The gratuity will also be increased upwards to cushion for inflation. Meanwhile, wage freeze will be imposed and loans will be put on ice too…
KIKIKI the man looks so frail thats why his fellow dictator mugabe is so concerned about his health.
Rubbish! Fuel price increment leads to the prices of most other commodities also increasing. How does this benefit the poor? For him everything there at State house is free. For your information fellow Zambians, in America at the White house the President and his family pays for all the food supplies there. Here we are talking about America, the richest country in the world.
Sadly, no one wants to tell us how the poor will exactly benefit. It is pure rhetoric unless GRZ is contemplating putting the so-called “poor” (who actually make the vast majority of our populace) on some sort of social cash transfer programme. If anything, the poor are even more doomed. Lets we forget, it is common knowledge that the ‘well offs’ are able to pass on their costs to the poor.
There is a saying that when you find a fence, endeavor to understand why it was put there before you pull it down.
Lungu in SA
President Lungu’s economic diplomacy has continued yielding results. He is currently in Saudi Arabia where he is signing big deals that include:
1. Oil deals which will see the cost of fuel go down to as low as K5. 5. per litre. Negotiations have been going on and finally the deal will be signed.
2. Funding of 10 more irrigation dams. Zambia is fast becoming the food busket for central and southern africa. President Lungu wants to expand investment in irrigation.
3. Funding of phase two 600MW solar plant. The 600 MW phase one is being funded by World bank through IDC. Hon Dora…
4. The president has pledged to create 500 000 jobs by end of 2016.
……..He has also opened mulugushi textiles with the immediate employment of 300 workers this rasing to 20 000 beneficiaries…
Time to dance bane…..play that song dununa reverse please……
I DOUBT MR. LUNGU’S WISDOM. DOESN’T MR. LUNGU REALIZE THAT BY REMOVING FUEL SUBSIDY, YOU ARE SIMPLY MAKING THE VULNERABLE IN OUR COUNTRY HAVE A MORE DIFFICULT LIFE BECAUSE THEY WILL NOW NOT EVEN MANAGE TO TRAVEL FROM ONE POINT TO ANOTHER LOOKING FOR FOOD SINCE TRAVELLING WILL BE VERY EXPENSIVE. THE POOR WILL SUFFER MORE. SUPPLY OF ALL GOOD AND SERVICES REQUIRE TRANSPORT.
The stringent IMF loan conditions are meant to hurt especially the poor. In which way are the poor going to benefit? When a govt stup!dly fails to manage it’s finances and has to resort to sharks for money they have to accept the bitter medicine that comes with the bailout package.
Fixing the economy is a bitter pill to swallow. In the short run there will be suffering by the poor and even the rich. When the subsidies are applied to the intended corners of the economy (if it has corners), every hard working person will benefit and the lazy one will perish. The jobless people will now get jobs and some can open up their businesses since the economy will open up and the Kwacha will be competing favorably with the Dollar.
Which jobless will get jobs ? We are still waiting for the 500,000 jobs promised in 2016 by lungu…..this money is just going to pay salaries and intrests on the borrowed money.
As usual this Lazy Bum conducts an interview on the Airport tarmac instead of a press conference…its laughable to think that you want to turn KKIA into an intrnational hub when the tarmac is crowded with cadres everytime this bum flies in and out at will.
The President meant the poor from the opposition who it coming not the PF cadres who are used to live poorly and begging all the time.Please can some PF cadres show me where I can buy cheaper fuel at K5.50 per litre or cheap meal mealie at k35?
There are no subsides to be removed. This is just a price hike that is punishing the poor.
The poor people of zambia have to pay for the incompetence of this lungu who spent 10 billion US on the most expensive roads.
We were told that investor’s will be pouring in when we build the roads, not one investor has shown up.
Bane wait until the electricity prices are hiked then you will realise how incompetent lungu is. He is busy arresting the opposition while people are suffering…
Dreaming is not prohibited but its how one dreams and what they do with the dreams. How will ECL explain to the poor that paying high transport costs is beneficial to them?
Does the president understand what he is talking about? What type of logic is it coming from ECL. When fuel goes up everything goes up and who suffers the most? It is the poor who get choked.
Please break it down for us. Who are those poor who will benefit from high price commodities? Which poor people, where are they exactly?
All Zambian govts have been ‘removing’ subsidies each time they increase fuel prices, or be it raising electricity tarriffs. Question is: How come the subsidies keep bouncing back and keep being removed eternally? Either the subsidy thing is an excuse for increasing prices or politicians keep playing politics with the economy by campaigning on a platform of reducing prices (in effect implying re-introducing subsidies) once voted into office. It is very likely that populist politicians – and Sata was one such -are the main culprits responsible for subsidies. To them they will promise people utopia, given power as a result, and hurt the economy with subsidies; and live behind a time bomb for their successor to diffuse. Sad part is – people always cheer on such unsubstantiated promises…
This plane Challenger can land at City Airport, why should money be wasted to ferry cardes, ministers, PSs you name them to airport to welcome Lungu or another Zambian President. When will this culture stop.
Is this a down to earth man who still wants people to dance for him, line up to greet him even going to Ndola for a football match.
Do you know that the government spends K300,000 each time these ministers, cadres, dancing queens, Defence Chiefs, other govt officials go to the airport to see Lungu off. They are paid VIP allowance of K1,000.
I agree with other bloggers who are saying , This man is not serious. STUPIDITY at its fullest..
City Airport is a harzard..the plane can end up landing in Fridays corner bar or someones back yard.
He was not at the summit – boza
I am happy that those who danced Dununa reverse will be in the reverse gear.Can tribalism put food on our table
While you Town Feller benefit from fuel subsides those in villages will benefit by using the money to build a clinic, school, roads, medicines, sending more medical, teachers & govt. staffs for training and then send them in the villages. Do you know that in most parts of the country people do not even know how a nurse looks, even a police man etc. so this is how the poor will benefit from this animal called subside. Mind you it is a long term issue, some of you are expecting miracles to happen tomorrow be percipient Rome was not built in a day.
Last time when subsidies were removed from maize how come they did not tell us how much was saved and how it was utilized??
Yes Rome was not built in a day but today it’s time to dance……music pleas…..dununa reverse….
Bakamba with all due respect what are we talking about here.
Zambia is in shackles right now.people are walking on foot from Mboya to kalala(LUANSHYA). Because they are failing to pay k4 for a taxi. And if am not wrong these are the poor you are talking about. And the well to do like you and the Kambwilies are moving from Madagascar to Zambia with taxi payers money.
Think big and consult with the HHs on shch matters. Yak!!!