09 Jun 2016

Government needs to continue to grow and diversify the economy in order to address issues of poverty, income inequality and unemployment.

Permanent secretary in the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, Mr Solomon Sekwakwa, said this when he appeared before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Wednesday. 

He said, as the country moved towards National Development Plan 11 (NDP), there was need for the ministry to keep on reviewing, improving and tightening some of its programmes. 

That, he said, would ensure that programmes were targeted properly and produced good results. 

Mr Sekwakwa said implementation of government projects was one area that needed to be addressed.

Currently, he said the world economy was not doing well and this had impacted negatively on the country’s economy as well.

That, he said, called for prudent use of government revenue and resources. 

However, as the ministry charged with the responsibility of managing government funds, Mr Sekwakwa said they had  managed to maintain the country’s debt to reasonable levels.

“Of course we have tried to be prudent, so that we do not find ourselves unnecessarily committing too much of our resources, such that we will then be forced to borrow a lot. So, we have managed to maintain our debt to reasonable levels,” he added.

The permanent secretary said the external debt was at 16.3 per cent whilst the internal debt was 6.8 per cent.

“We are making sure that we keep that area under check, because we do not want to commit ourselves too much, such that we are unable to recover in the event the domestic economy does not recover as soon as one would expect,” he said.

Due to the negative impact transmitted into the domestic economy by big economies not doing well, Mr Sekwakwa said the country’s average target GDP was almost slightly higher than what was targeted, which he said was not much. 

The target, he said, was 3.3, but was at 3.9, as the estimated average of NDP 10.

He said a committee had been set up to try and unblock and re-look at the new structural issues that needed to be attended to in the economy. 

This, he said was expected to assist in driving the main areas in the economy that needed to be reformed and re-structured to improve the business environment to allow the private sector to grow.

Towards the end of 2015, he said the country experienced a bad patch in terms of diamond sales as the major revenue earners together with customs and exercise revenues. 

However, he said, beginning of 2016, there were some improvements in the last sales. 

“But, we are still cautious, because what we need to find out is whether those above targeted sales were our customers, re-stocking or was it showing a greater appetite in terms of demand? So, for now we are maintaining our production where it is,” he said. 

All these developments, Mr Sekwakwa said, ‘had an effect in terms of our growth. The average growth for 2015 was a slight disappointing with a decrease of 0.3 negative growth. It affects us in terms of employment and other variables, such as trade balances, budget deficits and the rest.” 

Meanwhile, PAC chairperson who is also Kanye South MP, Mr Abram Kesupile apologised for PAC’s failure to convene on Tuesday, saying this was due to lack of quorum because some committee members were held up in other parts of the country over their constitutional chores.  ENDS