By NATION REPORTER
The sudden appreciation of the Kwacha will injure Zambia’s economy even more because the country will reach a point where the Bank of Zambia (BoZ) will run out of foreign reserves, Socialist Party (SP) spokesperson Frank Bwalya has said.
Mr Bwalya challenged Minister of Finance and National Planning, Situmbeko Musokotwane to tell Zambians what has happened to cause the sudden appreciation of the Kwacha.
He said the appreciation of the Kwacha may be artificial because the UPND government had a tendency of releasing United States dollar reserves from BoZ to create an impression that the local currency was gaining value.
Mr Bwalya said Dr. Musokotwane was on record as having said that there were certain steps that should be taken, which included the successful conclusion of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) deal to reduce pressure on the Kwacha against the US dollar and other convertible currencies.
“But we have not seen the IMF deal come through, we suspect they have offloaded our foreign reserves to give the kwacha a temporary appreciation,” he said.
He said the government was doing to the kwacha the same thing it did to inflation where liquidity was mopped up from the economy to portray that the economy was on a downward trend.
Mr Bwalya said the inconsistency of the kwacha from the time the UPND government took over power had caused a lot of damage.
Mr Bwalya said in one moment, the Kwacha was losing value and business people took advantage of the situation to buy the dollar and a little while later, the Kwacha would appreciate and the people who bought the dollar would not know what to do with it.
He said Government had failed to put in place sustainable measures to improve the economy and had now resorted to experimenting.
Sudden Kwacha appreciation to hurt economy, says Frank Bwalya
