A LOT of issues needing attention have arisen in the past one month or so.
Since October 10, 2014 when Finance Minister Alexander Chikwanda presented the 2015 national budget to Parliament, many other issues have arisen and, therefore, we could not do full justice to the proposed budget.
Within the proposed budget there are many contentious issues which call for attention but the entire national document was overshadowed by the commemoration of the country's Golden Jubilee.
Presented on October 10, exactly a fortnight before the main Golden Jubilee celebration on October 24, the proposed budget had to, obviously, be shelved as we focused our attention on the 50-year
commemorations.
Just when we thought we would return to the normal calendar, tragedy struck with the death of President Michael Sata on October 28 2014.
Definitely, whole the attention had to be shifted to that loss and Policy Analysis had to look Mr Sata's personal economic contribution to the nation in last week's article as a tribute to him.
In the coming weeks, God permitting, we will focus on some of the remnant issues from the year while also glancing at the 2015 national budget.
We will tackle some of the issues which have arisen in the last one month or so and highlight the contentious provisions of the 2015 proposed national budget.
From the proposed budget we will look at issues like the much-talked about proposed tax regime for the mining sectors to try and evaluate its impact on the mining houses and the entire economy.
We will equally look at some other tax measures which have been proposed, targeting various other sectors.
There are seemingly other hot issues like the government's resolve to address the current imbalance on the annual allocation of resources which is skewed towards consumption through the public service workers emoluments.
Given the requests and queries I have been receiving from the readers on the mooted offloading of some of the government shares in ZCCM - Investment Holding to the public, we will have to revisit the issue soon.
Some readers have been asking as to how they can participate in the imminent acquisition of the shares and many other aspect of the ZCCM - Investment Holding shareholding.
For instance, Mr John Misumbi wrote to me from the Copperbelt Province on October 29 2014 saying:
"How does someone like me purchase or acquire shares in listed company like ZCCM-HI or any other company?"
This has to be looked at with other related issues.
The current situation following the death of Mr Sata has also raised various policy issues which need to be tackled.
At an appropriate time, we will, therefore, have to weigh up on whether there is a possibility of economic policy shift in the country and some of the pitfalls we need to avoid.
These and many other issues will definitely draw us towards the end of the year when we will have one or two articles summarising the 2014.
Before that, however, I would like to focus on the Competition and Consumer Protection Act number 24 of 2010 and how it is being implemented by the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission.
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Still on the issue of consumer rights, the oil prices on the international market have been falling for some time now and from about US$115 per barrel in June, 2014, they are now hovering around
$81 per barrel last week.
In some African countries, like South Africa, the reduction in the wholesale prices of oil has triggered drops in the pump prices of petroleum products, as a ripple effect.
In Zambia, however, the Energy Regulations Board (ERB) has been quiet on the matter and yet it is supposed to ensure that Zambians also benefit from the falling prices of the essential commodity.
This has led to various alert local consumers through the Zambia Consumer Association (ZACA) to call on the Government to address the issue.
The authorities in Zambia should emulate South Africa where the petrol prices recently decreased by 45 cents a litre with diesel prices lowering by 60 cents for every litre.
This was the second reduction in the prices of these essential commodities following the first one sometime back.
Zambian fuel users need a relief considering that the prices of petroleum products in the country are said to be among the highest in the region, at K10.63 per litre for petrol, K10.01 per litre for
diesel and K7.48 per litre for kerosene.
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