K15 Million In Privatisation Fund – Chikwanda

MINISTER of Finance Alexander Chikwanda has told Parliament that over K15 million is the balance remaining in the Privatisation Revenue Trust Fund account as at June 30 this year.
Mr Chikwanda said the balance of K15, 273, 280 will be spent following guidelines stipulated in the Privatisation Act.
“These funds were spent on various activities, including purposes of funding the course of privatisation, facilitating the creation of Zambian investments, supporting new capital investments, supporting new structures in some entities that were about to be privatised, supporting alternative income generation activities, among other programmes,” Mr Chikwanda said.
The minister was responding to a question from Lumezi member of Parliament Isaac Banda (MMD) who wanted to know how much was in the account, what the money will be used for and why it has taken long to utilise the money.
Mr Chikwanda said utilisation of the privatisation trust fund is carefully considered because there are several factors that were looked at.
“There are issues to do with redundancy which these funds are used for and it is also used in mitigating eventualities that may arise as a result of privatisation,” Mr Chikwanda said.
But Mr Banda asked why Government is not using the money to work on dilapidated schools and collapsed bridges.
In response, Mr Chikwanda said the K15 million balances are not enough to fund capital projects, which are usually funded through the national budget.
Earlier, Lubansenshi MP Patrick Mucheleka (Independent) asked how many Multi -Facility Economic Zones (MFEZ) are in the country as at end of 2013 and if they have been subjected to environmental impact assessments (EIA) as provided for under the Environmental Management Act of 2011.
In response, Deputy Minister of Commerce, Trade and Industry Miles Sampa said there are four MFEZs at Lumwana, Chambishi, Lusaka East and Lusaka South and two industrial parks at Sub Saharan Gemstone in Ndola and Roma Park in Lusaka.
“The developers of MFEZ are required to submit EIA and they have complied except Lumwana which has not yet commenced the works,” Mr Sampa said.

Posted by Editor on September 26, 2014. Filed under LATEST NEWS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry