Maravi

‘African countries will emerge worse from economic crunch’

‘African countries will emerge worse from economic crunch’
Written by Chiwoyu Sinyangwe
Wednesday, February 25, 2009 3:25:03 AM

MOST African countries will emerge worse from the current global economic crisis owing to their reduced expenditure on social services, Commonwealth Youth Programme (CYP) manager for Africa regional centre Victor Mensah said yesterday.

Amidst the continued recession in the global economy, most African countries including Zambia have scaled down funding to social services, prioritising investments in infrastructure development as a way of stimulating their local economies.

However, Mensah advocated an increased expenditure in social sectors like education and health.

He also said youths were the hardest hit by the current effects of the global economic crisis.

“Countries that cut down expenditure on social services like health and education will come out worse when this crisis goes,” said Mensah during a breakfast meeting yesterday. “A sustainable or increased funding of education will have a multiple positive effect on the economies of member countries. With increasing pressure on poor families, there is need for doubling social interventions such as increased sustainable livelihood and skills training, support for the educational sectors such as reducing the burden of school fees, text books and extending school feeding programmes, re-tooling poor self-dependent families.”

And Commonwealth economic adviser David Ashiagbor said the challenge facing African countries was to ensure the expected increased levels of borrowing did not become unsustainable.

He said it was inevitable for African countries to borrow in order to mitigate the impact of the expected revenue drops this year.

Ashiagbor, who also said it was difficult to predict how long the current global recession was going to last, however indicated that the crisis would take “a long while.”

Labels: GREAT DEPRESSION II

posted by MrK @ 3:25 AM