The mounting loss of confidence in Zambian owned financial institutions is a serious national risk to our financial system. If this is not done, we shall see contagion risk spread to ZICB, NATSAVE, Zanaco, and ZNBS. We cannot afford to lose these national assets and institutions regardless of their weaknesses.
As a matter of national urgency and emergency, there is a need for the UPND government and the central bank to move in to forestall financial sector confidence.
The Socialist Party (SP) already has a master plan to come revive our own local financial houses. We will use this critical artery to catalyse a national economic renaissance that is rooted in our own people, our own systems, and for our own national, not monopoly capital interests.
Under the SP, the Bank of Zambia will be reformed to make it an instrument that helps to elevate the standards of living for our people. What use is double-digit GDP and single digit inflation if our people are hungry and poor? If our people are excluded from participating in commerce and enterprise through artificially propped up interest rates? The reforms at BoZ are long overdue.
Under the SP, we will identify financial institutions and support them to run profitably, but these must be Zambian owned and controlled. State resources will be banked in the local banks as part of the deepening of our local financial systems.