h allowed it to borrow to pay the arrears on its debt to the Fund. The country's total foreign debt stands at $6.2 billion, and Zambians are now saddled with low wages, high prices, and growing unemployment.
Until quite recently, the Zambian government followed IMF advice to the letter. All foreign exchange controls have been abolished, and a balanced budget is projected for 1995. Inflation has dropped from more than 300 percent per year to single-digit levels. None of these achievements, however, are meaningful to the growing number of people without jobs, or to the growing numbers of people whose real wages have dropped if they are luck enough to still have a job.
Manufacturing firms contributed one-fifth of Zambia's economic output prior to the economic restructuring. This contribution has dropped has dropped to half that level, and is expected to drop further. Most of Zambia's the textile industry has already been wiped out by subsidized competition from the Republic of South Africa. The state-owned copper company, ZCCM, which earns four-fifths of Zambia's foreign exchange is a prime privatization target for foreign buyers. With the country's economic restructuring, the only way that ZCCM can raise the US$550 million in capital to develop a badly needed new mine--the Konkola Deep--is through the sale of the company.
Rejecting World Bank advice to break up the company, the Zambian government decided to sell a majority interest in ZCCM to the South African firm Anglo American. President Chiluba, the IMF/World Bank toady, faces major political difficulties if Anglo American slashes the ZCCM work force.
Another big worry for President Chiluba are the activities of several of the ministers in his government. These ministers are members of Zambia's business elite who, as ministers, retain "cozy directorships of parasital companies." When Zambia's Meridien Bank faced bankruptcy early in 1995, the government, "po...