ZIMBABWE’s Treasury has set aside an infrastructure budget of ZiG58,6 billion for next year, but warned of scarce resources to carry it out.
The country’s infrastructure is in bad shape which critics say has become a drain on businesses.
Finance, Economic Development and Investment Promotion minister Mthuli Ncube last week presented a ZiG276,4 billion 2025 National Budget against expected revenue of ZWG270,3 billion.
In the 2025 Zimbabwe Infrastructure Investment Programme released alongside the budget, Treasury said successful projects and programmes delivery milestones next year would be anchored on prioritising the deployment of scarce resources towards ongoing projects.
These projects, Treasury added, were at advanced stages of completion.
“Consistent with our aspirations for Vision 2030, resources will be availed towards funding the 2025 Infrastructure Investment Programme including intergovernmental fiscal transfers amounts to ZiG58,6 billion whose breakdown is as follow: budget revenues of ZiG28,4 billion, development partner support of ZiG1,2 billion, loan funding of ZiG1,8 billion, and statutory and other funding of ZiG27,2 billion,” Treasury said.
In a breakdown on how the resources would be allocated, energy infrastructure projects will receive approximately ZiG3 002 978 000, transport (ZiG28 010 080 000), water and sanitation (ZiG2 423 000 000), and ICT (ZiG1 779 561 000).
Other allocations are health, which will receive approximately ZiG3 493 025 000, education (ZiG1 266 442 000), agriculture (ZiG1 976 210 000), housing (ZiG2 945 074 000) and others (ZiG13 729 496 000).
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“Given the continued infrastructure delivery needs and the limited funding capacity, amid the increased funding requirements to close the infrastructure gap, all available funding instruments for projects such as the budget, bond markets, bank loans, equity issuance, guarantees, must be leveraged,” Treasury said.
“This should be complemented by decisions on who will pay for the services once the infrastructure is delivered to ensure reliability and sustainability of services.
“Consistent with the above, and in the context of mobilising additional resources for infrastructure development, government will review and realign infrastructure user charges and other related service fees to build capacity for further reinvestment in new infrastructure and maintenance of existing stock of assets.”
Treasury said the annual investment programme would also focus its attention on project development activities, like pre-feasibility and feasibility studies, to ensure that Zimbabwe’s investment programme had a pipeline of projects ready for investment.
The goal is to entice the uptake of these projects from the private sector and development partners.
“The Project Preparation and Development Fund will be fully capacitated to support activities such as feasibility studies, environmental impact assessments and detailed project designs. This will ensure availability of well-prepared projects so as to enable probability of successful implementation,” Treasury said.
“These initiatives will be complemented by other project preparation and development activities being spearheaded through the ZIDA [Zimbabwe Investment and Development Agency], IDBZ [Infrastructure Development Bank of Zimbabwe] and Sadc Project Preparation Development Fund, among others.”
However, Treasury warned that continued inefficiencies in project delivery would result in unnecessary cost overruns, delayed completion, an increased number of stalled projects, as well as a lack of full actualisation of completed projects.
Treasury said the public investment management architecture would be enhanced through capacity building in project identification, planning, implementation and monitoring and evaluation and the use of consultancy and technical skills within other government departments and the private sector.
It will also be enhanced by improving the project coordination framework through the use of interministerial committees, reinforcing the quick win targeted approach that is aligned to clearly defined implementation and cashflow plans, enhancing due diligence on procurement to ensure selection of contractors with competent and requisite financial and technical capacities.
