How government is preying on its own companies

 “Anyone suggesting that I borrowed money from POTRAZ for my personal use either does not know how government functions or they are part of a dirty political campaign against me. First the accounting officer for any ministry is the permanent secretary, and he or she is the one responsible for anything and everything to do with money,” Mandiwanzira said.

“Secondly, the suggestion that borrowing of money from parastatals from the ministry, through the permanent secretary, is abuse of office is totally incorrect. It is now common government practice that the Office of the President and Cabinet authorises ministries to borrow from their parastatals to keep the ministries functional. In the case of my ministry, it received written authority from the Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet Dr Misheck Sibanda to purchase two condition of service vehicles for the minister and another for the deputy minister.”

The AG’s report reveals how the case of the ICT Ministry is not unique. Treasury is not funding ministries, which are instead looking to parastatals for cash. Ministries took $12 million from funds administered by parastatals.

“Some Ministries transferred a total amount of $12 084 785 from Fund accounts under their administration to meet expenditure of parent ministries without the authority of Treasury as required by the constitutions of the Funds,” the report says.

“The treasury has not been able to fund the government activities from the already constrained budgeted provisions. To this end, the ministry ends up requesting for assistance from the state enterprise for these activities to be carried out.”

At the Ministry of Energy, loss making parastatals were forced to give the parent ministry some $526 000 last year. In addition, a Noczim fund was also paying $2.7 million per month to pay off a $67 million government loan.

The Ministry of Tourism used money from the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority for ministry expenditure. “The ministry cited liquidity challenges for failing to make payments from its own resources. There was no prior treasury authority approving the arrangement between the ministry and the ZTA”.

The ministry tried to justify this, saying the ZTA fund was meant to develop the industry. This was rejected by the AG, who stated: “Expenditure incurred by the Ministry should be met only from its voted funds.”

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