FOR decades, our members of Parliament have been very playful when it comes to budget approval.
They have had the opportunity to ensure our budget solves the national predicaments by refusing to pass it without making the country win.
They, instead, conveniently play activists on fundamental issues well after the budget.
We can’t have a defective leadership, incompetent Executive and a pliant National Assembly. It’s a disaster!
They should not rubber-stamp a defective budget by protesting and refusing to accede to nonsense as has been the Parliament’s norm.
The country expects a new normal.
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Citizens should be urged to resist and fight vigorously and relentlessly against budgetary insults and assaults.
It is imperative that they recognise that we have had such a restricted fiscal space to continue focusing on cost.
The Finance minister must be cornered to focus his budget on spurring economic growth, diversification, value creation-based resource planning and that it shows a quantum leap of innovating outside the familiar of agriculture and mining.
Our pie is too small, yet the President and all economic cluster ministries are always innovating around the familiar.
It is evident how fragile the economy is as most company financial statements for the year 2024 show a decline in aggregate demand due to drought and depressed commodity prices, yet each year we plan for this failure.
It means we risk further driving the economy into an abyss it has been in since 1993.
MPs should push for the scrapping of destructive taxes as a critical ingredient to attracting investment, stop industry and commerce haemorrhage, grow national output, spur aggregate demand, enable industry expansion and germination of industry outside mining and agriculture.
As an example, the 2% intermediate money transfer tax often has a multiplier and snowball cost effect of 8% before required margins by business.
While the country is operating on over 30% margins, the region rarely exceeds 7%.
It’s a punishment for business and consumers. It makes the country less competitive and imports cheaper.
Business faces very complex tax, compliance and regulatory gates and it’s a minefield.
MPs should demand the same to be streamlined and simplified.
A supermarket, as an example, requires a minimum of hundred licences in order to operate.
It’s an atrocity. MPs must demand ease of doing business, reduced costs of doing business and minimised costs of compliance.
Government must be efficient through inclusive and open innovation to curb inefficiencies.
Cost of compliance is too high with a business having to deal with a plethora of government and local authority agencies.
It’s mostly an unnecessary waste of time and resources and should stop.
The Donald Trump impact on Zimbabwe shall be huge as he is an “America first” kind of President.
Without doubt, MPs must demand financial interventions in the fight against HIV, Aids and TB.
There is expected decline in donor funding due to the Trump effect and that funding gap has to be covered.
As of now, the National Aids Council (NAC) has already given a warning that free condoms may be a thing of the past very soon.
It may be the same with other NAC interventions like antiretrovirals, education and advocacy.
People’s lives are at risk and if the minister fails to plan properly, his moves must be protested and face stiff resistance in Parliament and by citizens.
We face a lot of other prevalent pandemics like hypertension, diabetes and cancer.
Before the budget approval, we should expect MPs to demand that the minister explains what interventions the country did with millions of sugar tax and 5% they collected in tax from calls and data usage in 2024.
It will be an abdication of duty if a budget is made to pass without accountability.
MPs must be vigilant on the health issues to stop the Finance minister from being playful with people’s lives.
Don’t allow him to bribe you with cars, “loans” and benefits this time around like in 2022.
In any case, also demand that the “loans” be repaid now.
I just believe Members of Parliament must robustly ask the Finance minister to cease and desist from allocating any cent to ministries, commissions, government departments and provinces with adverse audit reports until they clear audit queries.
It’s being playful with hard-earned taxpayers’ money to promote financial malfeasance and it must be stopped.
Along with adverse audit report is the need for an open and transparent parastatal and State enterprise reform.
I can’t even imagine any MP approving the murky and obnoxious continuation of the Mutapa Investment Fund.
It is not ideal to operate in secrecy on State business and assets.
I hope they will ask for an open and transparent reporting of its activities. We deserve to know.
There are massive leakages in State-owned enterprises such that it is not too hard a decision to demand that they publish financial statements and censure directors if they obtain qualified or adverse audit reports.
It should be the basis of further allocation.
They should not allow the use of unscientific methods to allocate resources.
With massive crony capitalism which causes excessive leakages in government, quasi-government tenders demand for an online and print board to make public winners of tenders, costs, prices and payment methods.
It can’t be business as usual when State coffers are being emptied.
I urge Members of Parliament to pay attention.
All the things we want for our nation like a functional stadium, hospital equipment and health professionals’ salaries, civil servants’ remuneration, education facility upgrades should be in the budget.
If not, demand it before passing the budget. It is very playful that MPs become activists on issues they did not demand in the budget.
As an example, they start being advocates of Fifa-approved stadiums yet in the past 20 years, they approved budgets without such capital expenditure.
It’s not very competent to demand such as an afterthought as it will be authorising expenditure outside the budget.
We hope MPs will go in there and make a difference this time by being less playful and selfish.
It may even include a protest to demand the resignation of that team at the Finance ministry.
- Brian Sedze is a strategy, innovation and compliance consultant. He is also the executive director of Free Enterprise Initiative. He can be contacted on brian.sedze@gmail.com