Hon. Zhou, you made the comment about increasing the budget for Tourism Ministry and we have done that. Hon. Bvute was very supportive of the budget trying to raise revenue relying on domestic resources because we are under sanctions and credit squeeze globally. He welcomed again the wealth tax with some adjustments. He was very clear that actually, this budget is pro-poor because of its strong focus on the social services sector and also on social protection, that is pro-poor.
Hon. Dhliwayo again highlighted that the BEAM programme is a pro-poor programme and so is Pfumvudza. The wealth tax is also seeking to redistribute from those who have a lot to those who have less. This is a pro-poor strategy as well. He also made a proposal about paying for claims in gold. I thought it was an interesting idea, but I will engage him privately. This is something that we can pursue. I did not fully follow it.
Hon. Hamauswa made a comment about changing the wealth tax and charging US$2 per household. We have about two million houses or so and I am not really sure about that. It cannot be the same figure for all. It has to be something like what we have proposed that there is a threshold and only those who are above a certain threshold pay the wealth tax. It cannot be uniform, otherwise that will then be what others have been calling a hut tax.
Hon Togarepi, welcomed the incorporation of US$300 into the main salary and that it is pensionable. He further said toll fees ought to be paid.
Hon Ndudzo, made a plea like the other two colleagues who made very passionate arguments that we need to toll more roads around the country then raise revenues to build more roads. I think it is a good principle that we should do that and we will look at that going forward but make sure that these are also affordable toll fee levels.
He also made a comment about the judiciary perhaps not being on the retention scheme they are. Maybe I will ask my colleague to furnish him with some of the details of this so that he is fully satisfied.
I also note the positive comments from Hon. Mapiki who was supportive of the general thrust of the budget and I really appreciate the contribution from Hon. Ganyiwa regarding toll fees that maybe we should do a 50% increase and that is what we have done in actual fact. There is also the issue of the SME Ministry and ZIMRA working together to integrate SMEs into the formal sector. I fully agree with this. He presented a very interesting argument about how we should think through a wealth tax versus a property tax. That is helpful to think through these things but who knows, going forward, sometime in the future, then we can refine it and take into account some of his thinking in this.
Then Hon. D. Chiwa said we need to look into the budget for disaster management. I thought we had some decent allocation in the Ministry of Local Government but maybe we will take a look and see if we can top that up. The thing is, you cannot really plan for disasters because they just happen. So maybe what we need to do is to make sure in our back pockets in the unallocated reserve, we have something to meet whatever disaster may hit us. But this is a very important point that he raised and I fully take it on board.
Also, in terms of investing more in irrigation, I agree with him. If you recall colleagues, we sat aside fines from the SDRs to develop 18 new irrigation schemes. I need to check with the Ministry of Agriculture how that is going. We will need two per province, so we are focused on this issue and I concur with him. Then the issue of sugar because perhaps he comes from the sugar sector, that next time we should consider not to open up for sugar. However, these are always temporary border openings to manage prices but we have taken into account what he said.
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