Finance Minister, Musokotwane, says govt no longer patient with unprofitable state-owned businesses

Government says it is impatient to listen to requests from loss making State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) who have kept asking for more money for survival.

Finance and National Planning Minister, Situmbeko Musokotwane, said government would remain reluctant to such requests as SOEs existed to make profits and not to continue asking for taxpayers’ money.

The minister said this on Tuesday when he received a K30 million dividend cheque from the Zambia National Building Society (ZNBS) at his office in Lusaka.

“We are as an administration very slow to listen to those requests because really the investments spent by the Zambians in these enterprises was of the view to receive dividends and not negative dividends instead of taking again from taxpayers and giving to the enterprises,” he said.

He said it was unfortunate that SOEs had continued to ask for money from the treasury for survival instead of making profits.

Musokotwane regretted that instead of these SOEs making profits and declaring dividends to government, they were instead requesting for more money.

“If only all the other SOEs were like the ZNBS, we would be smiling almost every day because every other day somebody, unfortunately that is not the case because in many instances.

“Instead of paying dividend cheques, they want to ask for money that a tax payer has paid to say can we have some of that because if we do not then we are going to die,” Musokotwane said.

He implored other SOEs to emulate the performance of ZNBS by being more creative and working hard at turning around their institutions to profitability.

Musokotwane said his office through the Investment and Debt Management department would continue to provide a conducive environment for better performance of SOEs using right policies.

Speaking at the same event, ZNBS Board Chairperson, David Nama, said the Society had consistently delivered a dividend payment to its Shareholders with an increment in every year since 2018.

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