Zambia’s ruling Patriotic Front Secretary General Wynter Kabimba on Sunday made an astonishing claim that the successful $750 million Eurobond was an idea of his government.
Featuring on the Sunday Interview television programme on ZNBC, Kabimba claimed that the issuance of the Eurobond was one of the major achievements of the PF in its one year in office.
But records at the Ministry of Finance confirm that the plan to launch Zambia’s maiden Eurobond was conceived as far back as 2006 when Ngandu Magande was Minister of Finance.
However, Kabimba claimed the Eurobond was conceived and implemented by the PF adding that no such brilliant ideas could come out of the MMD.
When pressed further by programme presenter Franklin Tembo Jr, Kabimba emphatically claimed that the Eurobond was the PF’s idea.
“The MMD could not possibly come up with such nice ideas, we didn’t inherit anything positive from the MMD. We had to think of new and better ways of raising capital for massive infrastructure projects,” Kabimba said.
At this point, Tembo Jr reminded Kabimba that the PF is still implementing the Multi Facility Economic Zones (MFEZ) which was another idea of the MMD.
“Look Franklin, these MFEZ were just on paper but now the PF is implementing them. MMD did not start and finish anything, the PF is actualizing all its plans,” Kabimba added.
Kabimba who is also Justice Minister further claimed that the PF is on course in creating jobs for the young unemployed people.
“We didn’t say we will create jobs in 90 days, show me a clip in which Michael Sata or any senior PF official promise jobs in 90 days. You have a library here at ZNBC, show me a single clip saying PF will give jobs in 90 days. What we said is that we will create enough jobs in the shortest time possible and we are on course.”
He said the recently launched Link Zambia 8000 road project will create around 24,000 jobs adding that new mines opening up are also expected to take in a lot of unemployed youths.