Republican President Hakainde Hichilema has commended his New Dawn administration’s economic restructuring agenda which has saved the country from imminent bankruptcy.
President Hichilema said Zambia would not have afforded to have a national budget allocation minus the New Dawn government achieving the crucial debt restructuring agreement after the country had defaulted on its excessive debt under the previous PF regime.
The Head of State insisted that it was important for the nation to be informed about the economic breakthrough that has been achieved through government’s economic reforms program.
“I have the pulse of what has been happening to this country before August 2021 till now and people need to know it was a difficult road initially because most investors around the world did not even believe what government was saying before we took office,” President Hichilema said.
He added that his administration had prioritized relieving the country of the huge debt burden which had threatened to cut funding to key sectors such as education and health as well as other essential developmental programs.
“Part of our economic reforms program was to deal with the debt burden or restructure the debt without which we were a bankrupt country. Without debt restructuring the whole of the 2025 national budget would have gone to debt service and there would have been no money for CDF, no money to fund free education, health services, social cash transfer and other things,” he said.
President Hichilema was speaking this afternoon when he commissioned the Powerful Diligent Veracious (PDV) metal steel plant at the South Multi-facility Economic Zone (MFEZ) in Lusaka.