Small scale farmers in Zambia call for a people driven budgeting process

Small scale farmers in Zambia have called the Government to embark on a people driven budget process next year (2010) and ensure timely release of funds for effective programme implementation.

ESAFF-Zambia continues to monitor the implementation of the national budget passed by the parliament of Zambia at the beginning of this year.

The chair of ESAFF Zambia, Mr. Mubanga Kasakula says the monitoring report of the agriculture budget will be ready by the mouth of December this year 2009.

“The report will be shared to the Parliamentary of Zambia Expended committee on Estimates” says the Zambia farmer leader.

During the January 2009 commentary on Budget, small scale farmers in Zambia called for the increase of the agriculture budget and timely disbursement of funds..

“We informed the committee that agriculture has been performing poorly due to lack of adequate support and wanted to correct the ministry of Finance that assertions made in part 2 of the speech point 20 that the country posted a food surplus in 2008 are not correct as can be attested by the maize importation by government”  said Mr. Kasakula.

Small farmers in Zambia however, commended the Government of Zambia for putting more resources to The Citizens Economic Empowerment Fund and request that conditions for accessing these funds need to be friendly if the poor are to benefit.

On decentralization processes, the small scale farmer called for the Government of Zambia to accelerate the finalization of the Decentralization Implementation plan.

On borrowing, small-scale farmers cautioned the Government to borrow money for productive purposes. “Our analysis of the budget shows that Zambia will borrow more money both internally and externally than what has been allocated for debt payment”.  They added that this practice, if not checked will see us back into the unsustainable debt conditions as a nation.

“We hope our government leaders will not fail to meet the commitments made in Maputo and Dar es salaam to increase agriculture development national budgetary allocation to 10%” said a report by small scale farmers to parliamentarians in Zambia.