I don’t see the Kwacha improving-Scott

Former Vice President Guy Scott says he does not see the kwacha improving in its performance against other currencies.
And Scott says politicians found it easy to preach subsidies before elections but went mute after winning elections as a result of a less demanding public.
Featuring on the Newsmakers Forum of The Post Newspapers, Scott jokingly said maybe Zambians should fast about the state of their currency.
He said that the fragile state of the kwacha has been masked by the Copper boom in the post 2006 era where the country’s largest export earner had hit high levels.
“The kwach won’t simply go up just like that to where it was. We have to accept that we have a currency that is one of the poorest performers at the moment,” he said.
“I don’t see how it is going to come back because for a long time we have heard this diversification song but we just talk about it one off and forget when we hit low times like these then we revive the debate. I think we have to accept that our currency is not going back maybe we have to fast and pray about it.”

Scott said that even projects like the Fertilizer Support Programme did not benefit the poor farmers but ended up in the pockets of high ranking government officials.
On the maize subsidy Scott said that it was fashionable to put a front of it prior to elections
but condemn the citizenry to market forces when the poll was done.
He said that there was an indication the country did not fully understand itself very well such that even in times when there is a boom there no full comprehension how it happened.
Scott said that some booms were cyclical and needed proper analysis to foretell the trend.