Grassroots not benefiting from economic growth - Finnish envoy

COMMENT - " the challenge has been that it has not been trickling down to poverty reduction " - when has 'enabling the producer class' ever led to made it's way down to the workers? In the words of comedian Wanda Sykes, "nothing good ever trickles".

Grassroots not benefiting from economic growth - Finnish envoy
By Gift Chanda
Tue 24 May 2011, 19:20 CAT

ZAMBIA needs to strengthen its domestic revenue mobilisation and public resource management systems for economic growth to trickle down to the grassroots, says Finland’s Ambassador Sinikka Antila.

In an interview, Antila said despite the positive economic growth Zambia had recorded in the past few years, the nation still had a challenge of ensuring that the grassroots benefited from the economic gains.

“Zambia has had positive economic growth but the challenge has been that it has not been trickling down to poverty reduction,” she said.

She said it was still a big challenge for Zambia to ensure that economic growth resulted in job creation and poverty reduction.

“Job creation especially by micro and small enterprises in rural areas is important. There is a lot of potential here but we all need to work hard,” she said.

Ambassador Antila said apart from ensuring that more jobs were created, it was important that Zambia’s domestic resource mobilisation was also strengthened.

She said Zambia had the potential to achieve its goal of becoming a middle-income country by 2030 if it strengthened its domestic revenue mobilisation and public finance management system.

“You Zambia have plans of becoming a prospective middle-income country and that requires that you mobilise more own resources for development,” said Ambassador Antila.

“When Zambia mobilises its own resources, it has to strengthen its public finance management system and governance system so that the resources that are mobilised are kept within the system and allocated where they are meant for, whether it is for infrastructure development, agriculture, or economic diversification.”