Mr. Speaker Sir, allow me to respond to issues raised by various Portfolio Committees and Hon. Members. I will start with a broad brush in connection with expenditure management, focusing on expenditure first then I will transition to revenue measures. Let me start with the issue that has been mentioned by almost all Portfolio Chairs, that there is no adequate budget in terms of the initial targets that the various ministries were expecting. Well, this comment was obviously made during the budget retreat vis-a-vis the budget circular ceilings. We listened carefully as Treasury and increased the allocation, almost to the expectation of each Ministry beyond the ceiling and this is what I presented on the 30th of November. I heard the Chairperson that when they said they wished they were at the level of what the Ministry desired to have in terms of budgets, but this could not be done simply because given the size of our economy and the constraints, we can only go as far as 60 trillion while the requirements are well above 110 trillion. The economy cannot just support the expenditure requirement – that is a simple constraint.
When we look at our tax revenues, we can only raise about 18% of our gross domestic product. The economy right now is unable to easily move above that ratio, we are working on it. So, some of the measures we have introduced are trying to address that. Other countries such as, South Africa, are closer to 30% if not higher, and Kenya closer to 25% have done better than us. Uganda has kept up, I think they are almost at 21%, Ethiopia has also kept up, and we are also working on it to see if we can continue to raise more revenue. Some of the measures cause pain here and there and debate, but that is part of the process. We will try to balance between revenue-raising measures and incentives so that we can incentivise our economy.
Mr. Speaker Sir, there is an issue that was raised regarding the accumulation of arrears across various MDAs, across various ministries. We intend to deal with this matter in 2024 and try to settle these areas. Some of them have to do with cross liability, across agencies, I am sure there is a way in which we can rationalise this so that there is minimal movement of cash at least from Treasury through rationalistion and harmonisation. We are working on this in 2024.
Having said that of course, we have a limited budget envelope, so we cannot go towards the target of 100 trillion. I listened carefully to the contributions from the Committee Chairpersons and some of the Members, particularly from the Chairperson of the Budget and Finance Committee, Hon. Chiduwa. He passionately made a plea that we should increase the budget for ZIMRA and I concur with him, therefore I propose that we increase the budget for ZIMRA by 70 billion dollars.
Equally, there was a passionate plea to increase the budget for one of our oversight entities the Auditor-General’s Office especially in the area of digitalisation. So again, I propose that we increase that budget for the Auditor-General’s office by another 10 billion – [HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear.] –
Coming to the Ministry of Women’s Affairs budget number 17, Women’s Affairs, Small and Medium Enterprises development. Again, there was a plea that this Ministry needed more resources to support the cause of women and gender equity in the country. SMEs need to be supported by building stores, that way you can actually formalise them and we can even collect taxes in a more orderly manner. So again, I was persuaded by that argument and we are proposing an increase to that Ministry of 20 billion Zimbabwe dollars.
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