By Peter Phiri:
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has taken a swipe at Tonse Alliance administration for blaming his regime on the current economic woes.
Instead, the party has blamed President Lazarus Chakwera’s economic policies saying they are impractical.
DPP Spokesperson, Shadreck Namalomba, said the current administration has done away with economic policies which he had put in place in favor of strange untested Chakwerarism policies which run counter to conventional economic theories and practices.
“MCP led Administration are nothing but a disaster to both the real and external sectors of the economy. Not only has heavy domestic borrowing crowded out the private sector and led to unsustained economic growth which has also wiped out foreign exchange reserves as 60 to 70 percent of Government expenditure,” he said
Namalomba went on to question the exchange rate policy deployed by Chakwera saying it is another wrongly crafted economic policy which has perpetrated the misalignment between the official and parallel rate in the economy.
He has further referred the current Forex shortages as a result of loose monetary policy which is stack at 14 percent against inflation of 23 percent as an economic policy which has failed to tame the challenge of rising inflation, erosion of foreign exchange reserves and stability of the exchange rate.
On the alleged DPP embezzlement of public funds, Namalomba refuted that the DPP-led government diverted borrowed money from the Afreximbank and shared among party officials.
“To begin with, it is completely untrue that the US$350 million being talked about was borrowed money from Afreximbank. The Afreximbank participated in the country’s secondary debt market as they bought already existing Government securities in form of Treasury Notes (TN’s) which were being rolled over. One can therefore never talk about diverting such funds into DPP officials,” he said.
