Going back to this point Madam Speaker, you have a situation where the Hon. Minister here talked about a surplus, what has happened to the surplus? Many times we were told about the surplus, I did not see the Finance and Budget Committee talking about the surplus. Where did it go? You have the opportunity to invite the Minister to say Minister, we are short of money can you kick-in the surplus. Why do we not follow up on things which are said here? Where did the surplus go? The report talks about SDRs, SDRs you are now spending money on roads rehabilitation yet the whole point was to have local contractors paying the local currency, SDR is not local currency, it is USD. Now you are using USD to pay the local people yet we were pushing business for the local people to make money.
Madam Speaker, the agreements were 50% would be USD and 50% would be ZIM dollar. I go back to Government, being the chief culprit of inflation, you have contracted foreigners to come and work here, Chinese are not earning yern (yuan), they are earning ZIM dollar. Madam Speaker, they go and burn that ZIM dollar to turn it to USD, they have no interest of investing here, they send it back to China. All these dams which have been built have come as a result of cost where inflation has gone up, when inflation goes up, it haunts the innocent person. The innocent person is the one who has suffered. Look at the contractors who have been contracted. How many are foreign and how many are local? Let us look at the local ones, have they done well, have they not done well but the local ones end up falling on the wayside because they are trying to be very straight forward in their approach and they lose business because if you clearly run a business in this country using ZIM dollar, you will go broke. If you want to use ZIM dollar for your health care, you die. Foreign companies given the ZIM dollar, they burn it, they take out the local contractors and they are on their own. So the USD is in fact working at the end of the day because they have got the financial muscle, they are not paying for any equipment because they are well resourced.
What the Chinese have done for example in this country, is just coming with equipment. I have never heard of anybody who has been loaned money by the Chinese. I have never heard of Government being given money by the Chinese but they are given equipment. Is the equipment money, is Zimbabwe looking for equipment? No, we are looking for money! The last time the former President Mugabe was around when Ambassador Mutsvangwa was Ambassador to China, there was a rumour that we were given USD1 billion. Did it come? It did not come, it ended up ZANU PF nearly losing the controversial elections in 2008. Where was the billion dollars-friend who does not give you cash? If our partners are China, why are we short of cash? They are putting you in a Parliamentary building where you do not have money, to do what? You want to be taken photos in that Parliamentary building when your children are starving, when we are not dealing with the local issues. You need to go back to basics.
Madam Speaker, there is the aspect of domestic resource mobilisation. Zimbabwe is endowed with resources. What happened to domestic resource mobilisation? Where is the accountability of the resources in this country? We are talking about 12-billion dollar economy in terms of mining, we are talking about small scale in terms of the minerals but the small scale farmers, while I agree with Hon. Nduna but they are a disaster in terms of environmental degradation. The country is worn out, the farmers cannot look after cattle. The only wealth that an African man has is cattle. Your cattle are your wealth and it is your moving bank. But now, with all these portholes allover in the rural areas, we are now even losing our heritage and culture. So where is the money going to come from for rehabilitating of all these holes which have been left which are killing our animals today?
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