Africa-Press – Zambia. Firstly , it should be noted that debt restructuring is basically about changing the terms and condconditions of a loan ; Simply put , when you borrow money and you are required to pay back with 50 percent interest, under debt restructuring , you negotiate that you pay back with 2 percent interest. And if you are required to pay back in 3 years , you negotiate that you pay back everything in 10 years at a reduced 2 percent interest.
This is what our President and his team have been fighting for. The danger of paying back with a huge percentage in a short period is that , government will go back to failing to pay council workers , fail to pay retirees , fail to recruit teachers , fail to sustain free education , fail to attract investors, recruit nurses , and all health workers , accountants , engineers , computer scientists, economists, development experts etc.
If such a negotiation is successful, it would mean that instead of government paying so much money with huge interest in a short period of time, government will pay with less interest in a long period.
It means that government can now spend less on debt servicing , and spare money for growing the economy so that government expands the number of taxpayers to be able to even service the debt and finance many projects without borrowing.
In what sense does government grow the economy? 1. Increased CDF for more people to access empowerment; 2. government will easily increase CEEC for more citizens to benefit from empowerment; these citizens will then become taxpayers and even employ others ;
3. Government will increase on the number of youths to be recruited into government as teachers , nurses etc because government now has more money to pay salaries;
4. Government can now grow the economy through empowerment to be able to help more drivers access Taxis for Yango how are you ;
5. Government will be able to support more farmers under the FISP ;
6. Government will be able to normalize the economic performance of the country in the long run and reduce the cost of living including the cost of doing business ;
7. Government will be able to help more pupils on the school feeding programme especially in rural areas and be able to buy sanitary pads for the girl child so that most of them do not miss out classes ;
9. Government can now start controlling the price of mealie meal in the long run and reduce it , by ensuring that efforts put in place to regulate prices of commodities are reflective over time ;
10. Government will now recruit more youths into ZNS , Army , ZAF , Correctional Services, Immigration, etc ;
11. Government can now find it easy to attract more investors who will in turn provide more job opportunities to youths and women and bring the much needed forex to stabilize Kwacha ;
12. Government can now enforce the budget with ease and improve salaries of workers ;
13. Government can now manage to support more fishermen to begin engaging in fish farming so that we have more food stuff which in turn trigger a reduced price of fish in the country ;
14. Call boys , our mothers and sisters selling in markets can now begin to see money in circulation and be able to access more medicine in hospitals;and
15. The cost of living shall now begin going down overtime ;
It should finally be noted that , debt restructuring does not mean all of a sudden everything goes down in prices because most of the stock imported is usually bought in bulk and a sharp drop in prices does not come immediately , but in a graduating manner ; the benefits are gradual but more predictable. Government also finds it easy to plan strategically over a period of time
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