Excellent Finance Minister
Felix Mutati
By Brian Mulenga
Felix Mutati is the bomb !!! This suave, business friendly Minister will almost certainly be a change for the better from the abrasive, no holds barred approach of ABC.
Felix Mutati is a former Corporate Executive and comes from a family of high fliers. He is Chartered Accountant and was at one time CFO of ZESCO.
He was among the best Ministers of the MMD era and was responsible for being the business face of the MMD government.
His more measured, analytical approach and frankly more business friendly and modern approach to business will make a change from the rough gruff ABC who despite being a wealthy businessman in his own right never really dropped his suscipicion of capitalism and exploiters a legacy of his revolutionary student days and his long association with UNIP and its soft socialistic approach.
We will not see disastrous interventions like disguised attempts at Exchange Control like SI 32, 33 and 55 or the baseless paranoia that caused the government to run up a debt of $600 million of unpaid VAT refunds to mines and that ended up causing freezing of almost all new projects and thereby costing the country thousands of jobs and 200,000 tonnes of copper production.
Mr. Mutati faces a very tough task. Inflation is still nearly 20%. Suppliers have been unpaid since the beginning of the year. Massive projects are still unfinished. Growth has slowed to 3%. He will have to do some serious cutting in Government expenditure, improve business confidence and also ensure the funds are in place to ensure Zambia maintains and improves it credit ratings. Furthermore he needs to tackle the diversification issue. Zambia needs to diversify its sources of foreign exchange and also move away from commodity based exports and more into value added goods and services.
Felix Mutati is the man for the job.