Chinamasa announces $4.1 budget for 2015

Zimbabwe’s GDP is seen flat at 3.2 percent next year with key sectors such as mining, tourism likely to register modest growth, finance minister Patrick Chinamasa said as he presented a $4.1 billion national budget today.

Government expects to collect $4.1 billion in revenue against expenditure of $ 4.115 billion. In Addition, it also expects $394 million in development assistance as well as up to $552 million in loans.

Chinamasa said recurrent expenditure will continue to dominate government’s expenditure at 92 percent leaving very little for capital expenditure.

Next year, exports are seen registering a five percent increase to $3.83 billion with imports falling to $6.15 billion from over $8 billion this year.

Between January and October exports amounted to $2.4 billion while imports cost $5.3 billion in the same period.

Between January and September, the government collected revenue of $2.73 billion against a target of $2.9 billion. About 82 percent of this was gobbled up by employment costs.

Chinamasa said the mining sector is projected to grow by 3.1 percent growth driven by nickel and gold while the ICT and transport sectors are seen to grow by 6.4 percent and 2.9 percent respectively.

He said prospects for 2014/15 agricultural season remained positive with $253 million having already been mobilised for the presidential input scheme.- The Source

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