The chamber of commerce in North Western Province says the K25.7 million Constituency Development Fund (CDF) announced by government is a stimulus budget which will accelerate the growth of not just the economy at constituency level but the country at large.
Chamber president Mukumbi Kafuta said in a statement that the CDF allocation was in line with the government budget theme ‘Growth, Jobs and Taking Development Closer to the People.’
Mr. Kafuta said the Chamber had pinned stabilisation of the economy through manufacturing, job creation and decentralisation as key priority areas.
He said the chamber is happy that under stabilisation, government has announced the introduction of large agricultural estates which come with large concession for irrigation system.
“And these estates will improve irrigation for small and large scale farmers all year round thereby giving them more disposable income,” said Mr. Kafuta.
He further said the chamber was happy that government has announced plans to increase copper production to one million metric tonnes per year from the current paltry Three hundred thousandmetric tonnes per year.
He said once copper production is improved more jobs will be created adding that the country has not benefited much from the good copper prices which currently stand at at USD $9, 000 per ton.
“And we hope that the formalisation of small scale miners will bring on board machinery and equipment for them to benefit from the mineral resources,” he said.
On the manufacturing industry, Mr. Kafuta said the sector has been the most affected in Zambia thereby killing the economy and strength of the currency.
He said under the Industrial Zone, companies will benefit greatly as they will be given tax exemptions which he said will encourage the growth of the sector.
“This will in turn result into massive job creation which has been difficult to actualize because in most cases Small Scale Enterprises (SMEs) have been suffocated for a long time,” he said.
He said SMEs have no friendly credit facilities to help them grow saying the pronouncement by government to help them access friendly loans or access partnership is well thought off.
