What Parliament said about Ncube’s 2019 budget

2.4.2   The Budget allocation to Parliament must be met with timely release of funds to ensure continued service delivery to Parliament. Some firms inflate their invoices due to delay in payments reducing the buying power of the budget. Parliament must invest in carrying out a mileage verification exercise and institute control on mileage and hotel accommodation to curtail leakages in these expenditure items.

2.4.3   As a custodian of constitutional democracy, Parliament needs adequate resources to carry out its mandate consistent with Section 325 (b) of the Constitution and there should be no negotiation in that regard. Moreover, the concept of separation of powers entails that funding of Parliament should be a separate process to the main budget and Parliament and as one of the three arms of the State must manage its own funds. In view of the above observations, the Committee urges the Hon. Minister to marginally adjust upwards the Parliament’s vote to enable the institution to effectively carry out its mandate as provided for in the Constitution.

2.5           Allocation to the Ministry of Finance and Economic Developments and Institutions under it

2.5.1   The Committee is concerned with the inadequate allocations to ZIMRA and ZIMSTAT and calls on the Minister to revise these allocations upwards.  The allocation to ZIMSTAT of $20.9 m will not facilitate timely production of socio-economic statistics including disaggregated GDP figures.  ZIMSTAT requires a total funding from both Government and Donors of US$38.102 million.62 % of the total budget will go towards undertaking of surveys and censuses, 13% Employment costs and the balance of 25% is earmarked for Support Services. 17 % of the total budget will be for Capital expenditure.

2.5.2   On the other hand, ZIMRA has got a five-year Strategic Plan from 2019 to 2023 which aims to grow revenue collections to 25% of GDP from the current 20% to GDP.  Operational costs should be within the standard cost of collection ratio of 3% which means for every dollar of revenue collected ZIMRA should spend no more than 3 cents. As such, if ZIMRA is supported through adequate funding, it will be able to surpass the 2019 revenue target of USD6.6 billion.

Item                                        2019 Budget Request (USD)           Approved Budget(USD)

Staff Costs                               142,056,070                                       94,680,000                                    Operational Costs                    47,989,095                                         39,000,000
Capex                                      92,906,235                                          30,000,000m

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