LUSAKA — Finance minister Situmbeko Musokotwane has hailed Indo Zambia Bank, describing its growth as a success story.
Indo Zambia Bank was founded in 1984 by the Zambian government and three State-owned Indian banks namely the Bank of Baroda, Bank of India, and the Central Bank of India.
The bank was officially opened to the public on October 19, 1984 and has posted tremendous growth since then.
It has a network of 28 branches and four agencies in various parts of the country.
Speaking when the banks chairman Dr Michael Gondwe and his delegation paid a courtesy call on him, Dr Musokotwane further eulogised the Bank’s governance structure.
‘’We want other government investments (parastatals) to emulate you by expanding strategically and making profits so that we could meet our job-creation and social sector expenditure needs,” said Dr Musokotwane.
He expressed government’s desire to deal with constraints to private sector investment and growth in order to restore the economy.
In the last five years, Indo-Zambia Bank has paid over K235 million to the government in dividends, and K1 billion in taxes.
Government holds 40 per cent shares in Indo-Zambia Bank while the remaining 60 per cent are owned by the Bank of Baroda, Bank of India and Central Bank of India at 20 per cent each.
He requested the bank and other key economic players to initiate international investment promotion programmes that could help market the country’s investment prospects to the world.
He cited key areas of focus as export-oriented agriculture, agro-processing, manufacturing, mineral-value-addition, and tourism, among others.
And Dr Gondwe said the transformative nature of the 2022 national budget had clearly set-out the roadmap for economic rebound.
Dr Gondwe pledged the bank’s readiness to collaborate with the government in all its economic priorities.
“We, thus, humbly recommend that steps be taken to urgently interrogate and assess the current capacity of the nation’s financial sector to adequately resonate with the requirements of the budget,” said Dr Gondwe.
