Chinamasa to reduce civil service bill from 90 to 50 percent by next year

Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa, who has been battling to cut the civil service wage bill for years but is being thwarted by his own Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front and the civil service unions, says he will reduce the wage bill from 90 to 50 percent by next year.

Zimbabwe’s wage bill consumes 97 percent of the government revenue leaving only 3 percent for development.

“We are targeting to reduce the proportion of expenditure from over 90 percent to less than 55 percent by 2018-9. I am confident that we will achieve it,” he was quoted by the State-controlled Sunday Mail as saying.

“Government has two avenues to address the wage bill which are staff rationalisation and improving production. We have already started staff rationalisation and the other method is to grow the cake – production, production and more production. We are also dealing with the issue to do with the current account deficit.”

Although Chinamasa said the cabinet had already agreed on staff rationalization last time he said so, the cabinet went on to reverse its decision.

With elections due next year, it might be an uphill task for Chinamasa to get the nod.

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