In April 2022, private and public sector relations were at an all time low. The President of Zambia, Hakainde Hichilema, who was only a couple of months on the job, was cited by Diggers newspaper [article by Julia Malunga: 28 April 2022] expressing his lamentations on the collusion between a small number of private sector players and government to whom the damage to the country’s economy could be attributed.
What was interesting was that this sentiment came on the back of Cabinet approving the Public-Private Dialogue mechanism which was aimed at fostering private sector development, inclusive growth and economic development in Zambia, according to the then Minister of Information Chushi Kasanda. This was the genesis of the formalisation of PPDF, post the previous year’s pronouncement of its creation.
This inevitably led to the creation of the first ever Private Public Dialogue (PPD) forum in July of the same year where the President gave a keynote speech at Mulungushi International Conference Centre at an event that brought together both sides of the aisle to an aptly themed get together under the title “A Zambia with a Conducive Business Environment Supportive to Jobs and Wealth”.
Needless to say, there were echoes for increased dialogue between the two and this marked the beginning of a journey that would see months of convergence of opinions from various key stakeholders who proposed several creative ideas on how the Private and Public Sectors could have improved relationships.
The long walk has been fraught with challenges. Professor Oliver Saasa, for example, in June of the same year, was reported by Philip Chisalu of Diggers Newspaper as lamenting on the “lack of regular engagements” with the President post the mooting of the idea. “The PPDF had only met once in seven months…and did not even address the nitty gritty of their expectations”.
As the old adage goes, “Rome was not built in a day” and if the December 2023 Private Sector Day was anything to go buy, Private and Public Sector Relations have improved a notch.
According to the Daily Mail of December 13th, 2023, a day after what some private sector players described as “promising”, the President tipped private sector firms to deliver the best products on the local market in order to inspire exports.
But one has to pause for a minute and ask the question, after so many months, what has actually been achieved from this rekindled romance? Well, Financial Insight had the opportunity to speak to the Head of the PPDF, Andrew Chipwende, who has a wealth of knowledge not least on previous efforts around improving public and private sector relations. He indicated that out of the seven working groups (comprising key players from agriculture, financial services, energy, tourism, mining, ICT media and digitization) that had presented over 86 issues of which 63 issues had been addressed through the PPDF platform.
“Dialogue is a continuous process,” said Andrew Chipwende, who spoke to Clarence Chongo the host of the PPDF FIZ Show on the sidelines of Private Sector Day. “It does not mean that seeing as you have agreed on 63 issues, that is it, as there is still the 23 that need to be addressed. Therefore, reform is a continuous process”.
Speaking to other participants at the event, one could get the sense that private sectors mood was also evolving towards confidence if the rekindled PPD journey.
“I will be honest that I was a little bit sceptical when it was being set up”, said Pangaea Securities CEO Ceaser Siwale who indicated to FIZ that he had seen several such initiatives in the past branded under different names that had come and gone. “There tends to be a lot of talk and praises but very execution. Talking shops.”
However, Ceaser believes that through PPD there have been very genuine discussions. “I feel the team at PPDF really wants to succeed at what they are looking to accomplish. It was also great to hear from the President what they had accomplished but also where there is also quite a lot of work to do”.
Financial Insight also had an opportunity to speak to an insider in the Manufacturing Technical group, Chipego Zulu, who is also a Trustee at the Zambia Association of Manufacturers at the event and she indicated that “definitely, some strides had been made” through the PPDF platform.
According to Chipego Zulu, “from a manufacturing perspective, what has been good has been the opportunity to table our concerns and to have those conversations directly with players from the public sector who we believe can assist to solving the problems”.
“When it comes to national budgeting issues, where we think the PPDF would key and instrumental for advocating for a certain position, we have definitely been able to table that”.
However, the ZAM trustee is also keen on seeing some of the outcomes from conversations between both parties. For example, she said, “We are also talking about licensing, something that the Head of State also touched on, we really see opportunities to streamline that with a single business levy being a key intervention for us as a private sector because there are just so many and our concern is the cost of doing business”.
Readers can watch the rest of the interviews on the YouTube Channel of Financial Insight to get to know what other key players in industry felt at the second annual Private Sector Day.
With the euphoria of Private Sector Day 2023 waning, a key takeaway from the outside in indicates that there is a lot of potential that can be achieved. Following on from Andrew Chipwende’s statement, continuously dialoguing is the key. However, the “proof in the pudding” is a further drastic reduction on the outstanding issues that continue to plague private sector growth.
