Donors stress good governance

Zambia's donor community on Tuesday urged the government to acknowledge the central role of improved governance to the success of any poverty reduction programmes in the country, agencies reported. "Improved governance is one of the key elements for poverty reduction, because it helps to improve the functioning of public institutions," the donor community said in a statement read by World Bank representative Lawrence Clarke, at a two-day national summit seeking to adopt the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). Bad governance, lack of economic growth, low incomes, severe disease and huge external debt burden were cited as some of the root causes of poverty in Zambia. The statement said that real incomes in Zambia were at their worst since independence in 1964, while earnings in the informal sector "are meagre and unsustainable". A blue print outlining Zambia's four-year poverty reduction strategy, however, cast a glimmer of hope in this southern African country's fight against crushing poverty, which engulfs 80 per cent of its 10.2 million people. Opening the summit, Vice President Enock Kavindele expressed confidence that Zambia could totally wipe out poverty in the next 10 years if the government steadfastly implemented the PRSP. Boniface Nonde, permanent secretary for budget and economic affairs at the Zambian Finance Ministry bluntly told the summit that the domestic resources available would not be able to finance the PRSP. He said the poverty reduction strategy would only be financed if the government reoriented its current public spending structure and refocused donor aid to the programme's priority areas.