By Scoop Reporter
TIME has now come for financial systems and models including government policy, to also be realigned and completely changed in our blessed nation of Zambia, says 2021 Chitambo parliamentary aspirant Crawford Mukando.
Speaking to The Scoop this morning, Mr. Mukando says Zambians must rethink and re-engineer they can develop capacity within the country.
He says it is a shame that it has to take a pandemic in COVID-19, for leaders to wake to make a U-turn on a number of policies and realize that Zambia has been running on a dependency system of imports and trading economic wheels.
He says our perception and approach too as citizens, must be that of self-reliance and creativity. But all this, will need government support and blessing, when it comes to fiscal empowerment.
He says the banking and financial sector in Zambia, has been that of favouring mostly the foreign investors or companies and very much little support for small to medium scale enterprises.
“We have inherited and tolerated an ancient colonial financial system, which does not seek to empower businessmen and women, rather it is quick to jump and finance foreign investment, under the guise of traceable track record, reputation, loan repayments capacity, affluence background and the list goes on.
“We the Zambians majority, come from a very less privileged background or no history of financial management and lack discipline in running our enterprises. We cannot really talk about change or rethinking for ourselves or innovation or local value addition,” Mr. Mukando said.
He says Zambia is endowed with a lot of resource such as material, human capital and financial resources but that the country has sold out all the industries under privatization.
“We are a county that has been settling for raw deals when it comes to foreign direct investments always settling for averages, while slave wages and causalisation is still continue to be the lifestyle of our desperate graduate employees. When are we going to be financially and economically independent?” he asked.
