Army owes indigenous suppliers $58.88 million but has no money

The Zimbabwe National Army owes suppliers, mostly indigenous, $58.88 million but was only allocated $28.46 million in the 2015 financial year and this is likely to suffocate them, the chairman of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Defence, Home Affairs and Security Services, Clifford Sibanda, said last week.

His committee therefore recommended that the Ministry of Finance take over the army’s debt so that it can operate without any carryovers.

Sibanda said the army’s accumulated debt dated back to 2010.

“Most companies which the Ministry gets goods and services were indigenous which are in dire need of financial resources. Failure to pay the debt would strain the working relationship between the Ministry and the suppliers of goods and services,” he said.

The Ministry of Defence was allocated $379.1 million which represented 9.3 percent of the 2015 budget.

Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa has complained that recurrent expenditure will gobble 92 percent of the budget.

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