By NAMUTENGA SAKAPILA
Delegates to the Seventh National Development Plan (7NDP) say Zambia needs innovative ways of financing to achieve its objectives.
The Delegates of the National Development Coordinating Committee (NDCC) noted that some of the major challenges in the implementation of the 7NDP were delayed or insufficient funding due to limited fiscal space.
Ministry of National Development Planning Spokesperson Chibaula Silwamba said NDCC attributed the challenges to ambitious targets given the current fiscal balance, pending legislation, weak synergies on development initiatives, non-availability of disaggregated data, and inadequate and untimely availability of finance.
Mr Silwamba said the meeting found that disbursements were consistently lower than budgeted for and not on time which is destabilising implementation of 7NDP activities.
He said that it was noted that there was increasingly more reliance on revenue generation that was not consistent, and that some Cooperating Partners were not yet fully on board.
“It recommended that there was need to uphold momentum on innovative ways of 7NDP financing, adopt a maintenance policy, produce more and better dis-aggregated data and implement decentralized monitoring and evaluation systems,” he said.
The NDCC, therefore, recommended that Ministry of National Development Planning Permanent Secretaries Mr. Chola Chabala (Development Planning) and Mr. Mushuma Mulenga (Development Cooperation, Monitoring and Evaluation) to engage with Cooperating Partners to help them work in the integrated system while meeting their accountability requirements at the same time.
This is contained in a press statement made available to The Independent Observer by Ministry of National Development and planning Chibaula Silwamba.
