MPs must stop being playful with 2025 national budget proposals – Newsday Zimbabwe

For decades, our Members of Parliament have been very playful when it comes to approving the budget.

They had the opportunity to ensure that our budget would solve the nation’s problems by refusing to pass it without bringing victory to the country.

Instead, they conveniently play activist on fundamental issues long after the budget.

We cannot have flawed leadership, an incompetent executive and a pliant National Assembly. This is a disaster!

They should not churn out a flawed budget by protesting and refusing to agree to nonsense, as is the norm in parliament.

The country is awaiting a new normal.

Citizens should be encouraged to resist and fight vigorously and mercilessly against budgetary insults and encroachments.

It is imperative that they realize that our financial space is so tight that we cannot continue to focus on costs.

The Finance Minister needs to be cornered to focus his budget on stimulating economic growth, diversification, value-based resource planning and to demonstrate a quantum leap in innovation beyond the traditional agriculture and mining industries.

Our pie is too small, but the president and all ministries of the economic cluster always introduce innovations around the familiar.

It is obvious how fragile the economy is as most company financial reports for 2024 show a decline in aggregate demand due to drought and lower commodity prices, yet every year we plan for this failure.

This means we risk driving the economy further into the abyss it has been in since 1993.

MPs must push for the abolition of destructive taxes as a critical component of attracting investment, stopping the bleeding in industry and trade, increasing national production, stimulating aggregate demand, allowing for industrial expansion and industrial development beyond mining and agriculture.

For example, an intermediate remittance tax of 2% often has a multiplier and snowball effect of 8% to the required profit for the business.

Although the country operates at margins of over 30%, the region rarely exceeds 7%.

This is a punishment for businesses and consumers. This makes the country less competitive and imports cheaper.

Businesses face very complex tax, regulatory and regulatory requirements and it is a minefield.

MPs should demand streamlining and simplifying the same.

For example, a supermarket requires a minimum of one hundred licenses to operate.

This is an atrocity. Legislators should demand ease of doing business, lower costs of doing business and minimizing compliance costs.

Government must be efficient through inclusive and open innovation to curb inefficiency.

The cost of compliance is prohibitive because businesses must deal with multiple state and local government agencies.

For the most part, this is an unnecessary waste of time and resources and should be stopped.

Donald Trump’s influence on Zimbabwe will be enormous as he is an “America First” type of president.

Without a doubt, MPs should demand financial intervention in the fight against HIV, AIDS and tuberculosis.

Donor funding is expected to decline due to the Trump effect, and this funding gap needs to be filled.

The National AIDS Council (NAC) has now warned that free condoms could very soon become a thing of the past.

The same may be true with other NAC interventions such as antiretroviral drugs, education, and advocacy.

People’s lives are at risk, and if the minister fails to plan his actions correctly, his actions must be protested and face strong resistance from parliament and citizens.

We are facing many other common pandemics such as hypertension, diabetes and cancer.

Before approving the budget, we should expect MPs to demand that the minister explain what action the country has taken with the millions in sugar taxes and the 5% they collected in calls and data usage tax in 2024.

If the budget is passed without accountability, it will be an abdication of our responsibilities.

MPs must be vigilant on health issues to stop the finance minister from playing with people’s lives.

Don’t let him bribe you with cars, “loans” and benefits this time like in 2022.

In any case, also demand that the “loans” be repaid now.

I simply believe that Members of Parliament should strongly ask the Minister of Finance to cease and desist from allocating any cents to ministries, commissions, government departments and provinces with negative audit reports until they clarify the audit queries.

This is a game with taxpayers’ hard-earned money to facilitate financial abuse and it must stop.

Along with the negative audit report, there is a need for open and transparent reform of parastatals and state-owned enterprises.

I can’t even imagine any MP approving of the dismal and disgusting continuation of the Mutapa Investment Fund.

Operating secretly against state-owned enterprises and assets is not the best option.

I hope they demand open and transparent communication about their activities. We deserve to know.

State-owned enterprises experience massive information leaks, so it is not too difficult to decide to require them to publish financial statements and censure the directors if they receive qualified or unfavorable audit reports.

This should become the basis for further distribution.

They should not allow the use of unscientific methods of resource allocation.

In the context of massive crony capitalism that causes excessive information leaks in government, quasi-government tenders require the creation of an online platform and printed board to publicly announce tender winners, costs, prices and payment methods.

It cannot be business as usual when the state treasury is emptied.

I urge deputies to pay attention.

Everything we want for our country, such as a functional stadium, equipment for hospitals and salaries of medical workers, remuneration of government employees, modernization of educational institutions, must be included in the budget.

If not, demand it before the budget is adopted. It is very funny that MPs become activists on issues that they did not demand in the budget.

For example, they are starting to advocate for FIFA-approved stadiums, but over the past 20 years they have approved budgets without such capital expenditure.

It is not very competent to demand this as a last resort, since this would authorize expenses outside the budget.

We hope that the MPs will go there and change the situation this time by being less playful and selfish.

This could even include a protest demanding the resignation of this team at the Ministry of Finance.

Brian Sedze is a strategy, innovation and compliance consultant. He is also the executive director of the Free Enterprise Initiative. You can contact him (email protected)

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