By: Kelvin Chisanga
It is common knowledge that Zambia’s economy is poised yet to swim in some more challenges, quite insurmountable to say the least as we approach quarter three and four of 2024, and this might spell out some significant effects into the proceeding year which will potentially and eventually form some distortions to key economic factors that would then take a strong lead into an election year of 2026.
Zambia’s economic prospects and aspirations likely to remain downward following a number of challenging factors strongly standing out, influencing against an achievement of positive development growth.
The case of power supply deficit is yet to remain elevated with a strong contentment hovering within a certain pattern of development as far as economic growth is concerned, as this fiscal year looks pretty quite challenging year to boast about, contrary to posting exponential positive effects as anticipated by various stakeholder’s interests.
Presently, the local economy is overheating due to a number of offsetting effects sitting right on the table of our economic forecast, as we are facing unimaginable cases of power supply deficit, running strong upbeats of inflationary spikes, facing unstable fuel situations with unpredictable climate systems affecting food and water security coupled with instabilities seen in the forex performances amidst low but slowly catching up on mining outputs, as the drive towards embracing green energy uptake looks promising.
The current economic predicament prevailing this year is actually compounding on this case strongly from all angles, which then calls for much concerted efforts drawing some engaging discussions with interests taken from all walks of life with key stakeholders trying to see on how key essential dialogue engagements can help tap into the potential solutions.
However, Zambia’s economic aspirations case has a strong upswing with a number of countable potential risk factors sitting right on the fence especially with those weighing on the food and energy supply fundamentals and security.
It is therefore very important to take note that Zambia needs strong moderating elements to help salvo of the already presented economic effects and also dive positively into lessons shown so far, and we should now be drawing aggressive policy attention right into this current account of economic situations and affairs being presently faced.
These few above elements which includes many other key fundamental factors under consideration, will be subjected to this downgrading process in our economy, as the IMF refocus on our economic projections too, and it’s inevitable that the consequence of some of our policy actions and treatments in this particular fiscal year will equally be affected, even though the objectives of some our policies being implemented are also not farfetched to see them taking a different directions with some relatively strong deviations amidst these challenging times.
