It is important that, as a nation, we create institutions that will operate in a transparent manner and can be held accountable. The views of the EAZ are provided as a contribution to Law making and upholding key principles of good governance as these are important for setting a transparent, fair and predictable environment for attracting sustained investment that also engenders public confidence.
Over the past decade Zambia has recorded sustained growth rates averaging between 5.5% and 6%. Official statistics also show that the levels of poverty have been on the decline. But while these data paint an optimistic picture of Zambias progress, perceptions of several stakeholders in Zambias development, notably development NGOs and those working at the grassroots, are at variance with this picture. They paint a less optimistic scenario of growing hardships and suffering among the poor. One needs to understand the reasons for this disconnect between these two opposing perceptions. And the reasons are many.
The Zambian Econmy is small and import dependent. Given this the exchange rate is indisputably one of the most important macroeceonmic variables.Movements in exchange rate have significant pass-through effects to consumer prices. The Zambia kwacha has depreciated almost continuously since it was floated in 1993. This movement in the exchange rate has left analysts, policy makers and exchange market agents disturbed. The stability of the nominal exchange rate plays a significant role in the successful performance of the economy. Despite the overall dramatic improvements in macroeconomic environment in recent years. Zambia has failed to reduce poverty, especially in the rural areas, and it has also failed to eliminate volatility of the exchange rate. The Government, through Bank of Zambia (BoZ), has being unsuccessful in persuading the Commercial Banks to reduce lending interests rate, needed to boost domestic investment.
Public procurement systems are at the centre of the way public money is spent, centre at which public budgets get translated into public services largely through the governmentfs purchase of goods, works, and services in the country. This makes public procurement be a very powerful and important business process within a political system. Thus a failure to properly balance the system can lead to wasted effort and poor development results, and exacerbate corruption and poverty in the country. Thus, an effective public procurement system becomes very critical to poverty reduction
The purpose of this report is to provide a snapshot of Zambias private sector: who they are, what they do and how they do it. Inaddition, the report describes the contraints the private sector faces ands analyzes the impact of theses on productivity. While the report highlights the implications it analysis, it does not provide recommendations as this will be undertaken in a seperate but related process.
Although most Zambians work in micro, small and medium sized enterprises (MSMEs), there is little information about MSMEs available. This information gap has made it difficult for policy makers, businesses and donors to design policies, services and programs that can help these MSMEs improve their productivity and growth.The universe of Zambian businesses is highly dualistic, reflecting extreme difference in the profile and peformance of firms.
The Zambian financial services sector comprises 16 commercial banks and 71 non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs), among which are 15 microfinance institutions (MFIs) and 11 leasing and finance companies. The Government of the Republic of Zambias Financial Sector Development Plan (FSDP) launched in 2002 has focused on a range of interventions to enable the Zambian financial system to become a stable, sound and market-based financial system that supports efficient mobilization and allocation of resources necessary for economic diversification, sustainable growth and poverty reduction
There have been noticeable improvements since the launch of the FSDP including an increase in domestic credit to the private sector, an expansion of the footprint of banking services, improvements to the national payments system, and the launch of the first credit reference bureau. Nevertheless a recent review of these reforms noted that further efforts are required to counter the tendency of the Zambian financial sector to participate in but not help drive market-based economic growth.
This report examines the productivity of the Zambian enterprises. It is one of the four technical papers that collectively provide a comprehensive profile of business activity in Zambia, including the performance of the Zambian businesses, the constraints under which they operate and the provision of business services that impact their competitiveness and growth. The report has three goals; first, it will identify the salient characteristics of private-sector small business activity in Zambia. Second, it will identify and analyze the key constraints holding back small-business performance. Third, it will identify policies and programs that will enable these small businesses to grow rapidly in the medium term.
Many businesses of all sizes, types and sectors operate in rural and urban areas across Zambias nine provinces.It is hoped that the analysis will help to inform and build consensus amongst government officials, businesses and other stakeholders about the private sector in Zambia, key constraints that private firms face, and policies and programs that could increase productivity and investment, thereby enhancing growth, encouraging diversification and boosting employment.
Policymakers, service providers, donors and other market actors often need to segment businesses into that show differences among businesses, within a defined continuum. Dividing the business landscape into component parts can facilitate the targeting of policy, assistance, products and services to different market segments, making these more efficient and effective. To be useful, these segments must be well defined, and while related to each other within defined parameters, sufficiently differentiated to discern one segment from the next. The segments must not be small that they are too numerous to address.
This is the second World Bank assessment of Zambias investment climate. Its objective is to highlight some of the impediments to growth and export diversification in the current business environment in the country. It is also a sequel to an earlier assessment (World Bank, 2004), which also addressed this same issue. Like the first assessment, it is based on an analysis of enterprise survey data specifically collected for the purpose, namely, the World Banks Zambia Enterprise Survey of 2008, which the report analyzes along with data from the Zambia Investment Climate Survey of 2003 and similar data on a group of comparators selected from the World Bank Enterprise Survey (WBES) cross-country database. The comparators are drawn from the region and from high performing middle income economies in other parts of the world.
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