Speeches UPND’s only achievement, says Kateka
By Tony Nkhoma
THE only achievement the United Party for National Development (UPND) has scored is issuing speeches on the economy that do not reflect reality, New Heritage Party (NHP) president Chishala Kateka has said.
Kateka told The Mast in an interview the UPND had failed to align its economic statistics with the daily reality being lived by the people.
“The New Heritage Party would like to weigh in on the recent exchange between Minister of Finance Dr Situmbeko Musokotwane and former deputy minister of finance Dr Mbita Chitala. For us, the most striking feature of the recent exchange is not the disagreement over arithmetic but the quiet revelation that Zambia may be living in two parallel economic universes,” she said.
Kateka said there is a seemingly a parallel economical trajectory that the UPND is championing.
“In one universe, the numbers are clean, the charts rise steadily and the country appears to be marching toward prosperity. In the other, citizens sit in the dark while factories fall silent, and the promise of growth feels like a story best told around a campfire,” Kateka said.
She said Dr Musokotwane is failing to cut a distinction between nominal and real Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
“That distinction matters. But the Minister’s comfort ends there. His argument is statistically sound but developmentally hollow. It rests on the assumption that what is measured must necessarily be meaningful,” she said.
Kateka said unfortunately, Zambia’s economic reality has a persistent habit of escaping the neat boundaries of national accounts.
She said a country cannot claim transformative economic growth when its per capita improvement is barely enough to buy a loaf of bread.
Kateka said beyond this, the conventional GDP framework does not know how to count the dollars that quietly slip out of the country through complex mining structures.
“Production is booked as growth while the proceeds take a one-way flight to offshore destinations. The Minister’s rebuttal offers no comfort on this point. He chooses the safety of technical correctness over the discomfort of structural truth,” she said.
Kateka said the electricity crisis exposes Zambia’s economic truth even more starkly.
She said there is no government that prioritises energy export while putting the local demand in serious danger.
“There is the curious matter of electricity exports. Even as domestic power tightened, Zambia continued to export substantial quantities of power to neighbouring countries. Governments have been known to renegotiate commercial contracts when national welfare is in danger. Ours, it seems, prefer to keep the lights on in foreign capitals while its own industries stagger in the dark,” Kateka said.
She said you cannot have a government that prioritises political over technical expertise, especially in managing the country’s energy sector.
“Experienced reservoir professionals were shown the door and replaced with individuals who may have had political blessings but not hydrological expertise. Reservoir levels do not fall by diplomacy. They fall by mismanagement. The deeper problem is that Zambia has mistaken coping mechanisms for strategy. Solar panels appear by the truckload,” Kateka said.
She said it is only under the UPND that the word diversification makes its way into speeches with theatrical regularity.
Kateka said Dr Musokotwane offers no vision for how Zambia intends to escape the gravitational pull of commodity dependence.
