Economic Reform Policies In Zambia During Chiluba's Government

On Oct.31 1991, Zambia hold the democratic president election for the first time. The only one year old party, Movement for Multi-Party Democracy (MMD) defeated the United National Independence Party (UNIP) which had been on power for 27 years. And Frederick.Chiluba became the second president of Zambia in history.After Chiluba came into office, he followed the advises of IMF to implement economic reforms according to the theory of Neo-liberalism Economic Thoughts. His purposes was to recover and promote the economy development. In the first few years after the major election, the MMD government pursued their reforming policies, and the economic prospects for Zambia also seemed good. Those policies included freeing the interest and exchange rates, introducing VAT to replace the consuming tax, introducing cash budget, removing the subsides on maize and fertilizer. But on the second-term government(1996-2001), Chiluba adjusted his economic policies. The government relaxed the disciplines on implying cash budget, introduced temporary taxation, re-tightened the grip on the agriculture market and frizzed the privatization of ZCCM. After almost a decade of continuous structural adjustment programmes, the record on Zambian policy reforms in the 1990s is exceedingly complex and mixed. On the one hand, during the 1990s the foundations were laid for a shift from a state oriented to a market based economy. Most importantly, despite several exogenous shocks and uneven implementation, none of the reform measures implemented have been reversed. But, over time, the MMD government's commitment to economic reform waned. Clearly, much less progress was made in terms of restructuring the economy by the second MMD government (1996-2001).After almost a decade of uninterrupted policy reforms, the record in terms of economy is week. In terms of macro-economic growth indicators, the Zambian economy has shrunk and is now smaller than before. Per-capital GDP has dropped, but the external debt has increased. The output of copper production has been declining for the whole decades. In Dec.2000, Zambia is judged by the World Bank and IMF to have reached the decision point of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries(HIPC) initiative. In Oct.2001, Minister of Finance concedes that his government's liberal economic reforms have increased poverty in Zambia. And the UNDP argued that Zambia is the only country in the world with a worse human development index than it had in 1975.The major election of Zambia once be taken as an pattern for the other African countries by western countries, and the western countries also provided a large number of suggestions and assistance to their "pattern". However, Chiluba's democracy government didn't solve those problems which had been existed since Kaunda's government. The author will to conclude the experiences of economic development in sub-Saharan African countries through analyzing the economic reform policies of Chiluba's government.