Masebo cautions government over PPP

Masebo cautions government over PPP
Written by Ernest Chanda
Wednesday, February 11, 2009 5:05:20 PM

CHONGWE member of parliament Sylvia Masebo on Tuesday cautioned government to be cautious of the Public Private Partnership (PPP) programme.

Debating the budget in Parliament, Masebo said the PPP Programme could lead government to concessioning all utility companies.

"Be careful with the Public Private Partnership before you end up concessioning utility companies. We will end up with nothing just like we leased out markets. We must be careful as we enter these PPP contracts because one day we are going to give our main roads to somebody and then we will have no road to use. There is a risk of the nation experiencing riots because of PPP, I'm just warning you," Masebo said.

She further reminded government not to be too excited about the removal of the windfall tax on the mines.

"Let's not be too excited that we are encouraging more investment in the mining sector by removing the windfall tax. Let's put our foot down and charge these mining companies according to our conditions. When they come they don't want to pay anything and we seem to be scared of them. Where they come from they have subsidiary companies and they can give us any price. Let's charge these mines according to our own prices based on our metal exchange rate. I therefore call on the Ministry of Local Government and Housing and the Ministry of Mines to work together and collect taxes from the mines," Masebo said.

She said it would not be good for government to just sit even when things were not going right.

"This attitude of business as usual will not serve Zambia. This is a year of credit crunch and I hope we will not be seeing ministries scattering money all over at Women's Day or other functions," Masebo said.

Masebo also accused some government technocrats of going against President Banda's word in the way they prepared the budget.

"When this budget was presented to Parliament I was excited because I saw that it would help fight poverty. But when I went back home and looked through the Yellow Book I was disappointed to discover that the agriculture allocation had reduced by about K300 million.

The fear is that most of that money could go towards establishing offices since we now have two ministers of agriculture.

Agriculture is the only sector that can create employment because you don't need to speak English but you just need to be healthy for you to farm," said Masebo.