Mthuli Ncube’s 2024 budget concessions in full

Then is the Ministry of Youth Empowerment Development and Vocational Training again there was a very passionate plea that we should increase the budget for this Ministry.  I think it was Hon. Ziyambi who had a passionate plea that we should do something after all the youth are the future, with the issues regarding substance abuse and so forth.  So, we felt that we had to do something here, the building of vocational training centers.   I propose that we increase the budget for the Ministry of Youth, Empowerment Development, and Vocational Training by another 50 billion ZWL.

There is the Ministry of Hospitality Industry, again the portfolio Chair argues that what was done here, is that we continue to treat this Ministry as if it is a department and I accept that.   I see great potential going forward, tourism numbers are looking up, and more hotels are going to come up.  It is a sector that I also know well, have been an operator in the sector.  I must say that we had to do something for this Ministry so I propose an additional 10 billion ZWL towards the Ministry of Tourism and Hospitality Industry.

An issue was then raised by the Chair of the Higher Education Ministry, Professor Murwira’s Ministry that we needed to do something about investing in infrastructure to assist disabled learners in our tertiary institutions.  Again, as Treasury, we were persuaded by this so we have allocated an additional seven billion towards infrastructural support for this Ministry.

I also listened to the Chair of the Portfolio Committee that covers Defence and Security in the area of War Veterans, Hon. Nguluvhe, and other contributors.  Again, there is an oversight where there was no budget for the funerals of war veterans.  An allocation will be extended towards that Ministry again to deal with that matter and the other matters within that Ministry.

I also listened carefully to the contributions regarding the companies that are under this Ministry that they should be supported to take off.  They will be supported; just to say a few things, I was personally involved in the creation of these companies.  I know the whole history.  We have currently six farms and we expect eight farms. Two provinces have not yet given us towards war veterans. I am still waiting, a lot of cities have no farms so we include Harare and Bulawayo. We have 21 mining claims and they are mainly in the gold sector under that comfort.  We have a hunting concession that is under that sector and then we have also a financial institution under the umbrella fund that we are also supporting.

The War Veterans Welfare has the intention of creating a real estate company.  They also want to create a health facility for war veterans and we as Treasury, are supporting so again going forward, it is a Ministry that can lean on us after all the Permanent Secretary of that Ministry was my former staff in the front office.  So, I think I feel obliged to support it as we support the war veterans in general.

I now turn to the issue of budget releases and it is a fair comment that budget releases are often not followed up by cash releases.  Cash releases are what matters when we prepare the budgets.  That is correct, we have created a new system where we want the cash releases to lead budget releases, it does not sound quite right, but at least they should match.  We asked the Accountant General first how much cash they are  expecting in the next week.  Therefore, we can only do budget releases to this amount.  That way, budget releases will not run ahead of cash releases because budget releases are done by our expenditure department within the Treasury while cash releases, which is what matters, are done by the Accountant General’s office.  We will have that alignment going forward.  It will remove all the headaches and not raise expectations for additional budget and then it does not come because no cash is released. Devolution programme has achieved a lot.  If I can urge our MPs, especially the new MPs that there is a trick to this.  

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