Zimbabwe Finance Minister laments he has no money to spend as $97 out of every $100 he gets goes to wages but he is not adopting South African rand

Hon. Maondera, you did not understand the schedule in the Criminal Code, we are only changing three levels. He rightly pointed out to us that we are changing $20 to $30 and so on. When we stand here, these are the people who are breaching the law. To the extent possible, you should be on my side, not on the side of those who are breaching the law. You are law makers and you put this law into effect. Now you come here and stand on the side of those who are breaching the law and you say no, do not touch them etc, and you are legislators. I want us to clearly understand. We need to support each other in this regard.

When I look at the state of our roads, we are looking at billions and not small money to get them repaired. We should be putting our heads together as to where we are going to get that money from. People talk about us being richly endowed, yes we are. Platinum, gold, diamonds and so on, but for as long as it is underground, it is of no value to the Minister of Finance. It needs to be taken out of the ground and to do that, you need money and whose money? This is where people think it can be a one day wonder. It is not. We engage in lengthy meetings with investors, some of them who do not even pursue it beyond first meetings.

Some drop out when you think you are near to clinching a deal. These are the realities. When people talk, they talk carelessly or confidently saying we have money and so on. You do not understand how many investors have come into my office saying they have billions of dollars. When I pursue it, they cannot put even US$1 000 on the table. So, we need to be careful about these things.

Hon. Maondera, I thought on the health levy, it is a matter that I have been thinking very much about. I do not want the health levy to be eaten up by any bureaucracy. So, I am going to create a special account into which this money will go and the next issue is, Treasury will just disburse it to the Minister of Health for the purposes for which this levy is intended. No boards of directors, nothing of the sort and no cars at all. I treasure very much debate and talking about debate and I keep an open mind. It does not matter where good ideas are coming from; I always take them on board.

I think we should never degenerate into abuses. When you abuse    other people, even some of the good ideas you mention, I close my ears and I thought that Hon. Mliswa got very much to the border of abuse.  It is not good.  I know he could have been brought up to abuse other people without any problem so far, but if he is to be taken seriously by me, I think he needs to confine himself to the realm of ideas.

The issue about Willowvale Motors – it is not just Willowvale Motors, but AVM and Quest Motors.  We have been working so far with Quest Motors and AVM to insist that the cars that they manufacture should be sold locally.  In other words that we stop importation and that they should produce quality cars which match those which are imported and I think we are going quite far on that route.  So far, we have started it with purchases of buses by schools.  We have put a ban on importation of buses so that they are sourced locally in order to create local employment and we will extend that understanding to other sectors in the motor trade.

I also thought that I should make this point, Mr. Speaker Sir, I think we should never justify corruption on the basis that we are underfunded.  Parliamentarians are the salt of the earth.  If we justify corruption because we are not funded, who are we going to oversee and will we be taken seriously?  So, the contribution by the Hon. Member and others basically to say, we can skip Parliament.  We just come here, collect our coupons and go wherever and at the end of the day, the truth of the matter, Mr. Speaker Sir, if we follow them, they are not even going to do businesses.

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