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Secretary to the Treasury, Felix Nkulukusa, has announced that the approved US$189 million by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) under the 38-month Extended Credit Facility (ECF) will reflect in Zambia’s account on Monday next week.
Nkulukusa announced that the Bank of Zambia (BoZ) had already confirmed with the Ministry of Finance and National Planning the account in which the money would reflect in.
He said on Friday at a media briefing in Lusaka on the IMF distribution that the money, would reflect in the BoZ account on Monday next week.
The completion of the first ECF review allows for an immediate disbursement of US$189 million, bringing Zambia’s total disbursements under the arrangement to about US$374 million.
Zambia’s ECF arrangement is for a total of US$1.3 billion at the time of programme approval on August 31, 2022.
Read more: IMF disburses $189 million to Zambia, spells out country’s economic performance
“Yesterday we got about US$189 million and this amount, the bank of Zambia has already communicated the account for which it is going and it takes two days for the amount to reflect in our account so we are expecting this money to be in our account by Monday,” Nkulukusa said.
At the same meeting, BoZ Governor, Denny Kalyalya, pointed out that the stage to complete signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the official creditors had been set by the approval of US$189 million.
He also said the US$189 million was split in two forms namely, budget support and building the national reserves.
“We negotiated that we include budget support in the agreement in order to close the fiscal gap as the side needs support. So, 50 percent will go towards budget support and the other 50 percent will go towards reserve build up,” he said.
Speaking earlier, Finance and National Planning Minister Situmbeko Musokotwane, reiterated that both the official and private creditors would have the same burden as they would be treated equally.
“The thing we know for sure is expectations that the burden of private creditors is going to be similar to the burden of the official creditors. We do not want any of them to think that they have given away too much than the others,” Musokotwane said.
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