Zimbabwe Finance Ministers says suspension of banks loans was a big hammer but it was needed

HON. PROF. M. NCUBE: I want to thank Hon. Komichi for the question. Are we now in the 2007/8 era? First of all, we did not have a balanced fiscal position and we did not have tight monetary policies. We did not have the sort of fundamentals that you see now. Secondly, we also did not have the official dual currency that we have put in place which has allowed citizens, corporates and other agencies to utilise these currencies as they desire. We are not.

Coming to salaries, there is also a fallacy Madam President that the salary back in October 2008 for civil servants – we keep hearing a figure of US$540 per person but that is not correct because back then the effective salary was in fact half of that. It was about US$275 and I can prove it. The demands for a salary of US$540 are completely misleading and the kind of package that we have put in place is for civil servants and we will continue to do that.

Are we not doing a lot already as Government? I think we are and I said we are doing a lot for the teachers. We have a commitment to build institutional accommodation and we are doing that. Importation of vehicles duty free, supporting teachers in terms of school fees up to three children in a Government school of course. Nurses – we have similar slew of non-monetary benefits as well. Surely, we have really applied our minds and done a lot to support our hardworking civil servants and they are hardworking because I work with them.  I just wanted to debunk the thinking that we have not reached the kind of October 2008 levels of salary because even that figure is actually fallacious.

HON. SEN. ENG. MUDZURI: Hon. Minister, you have been highlighting in all our budget sessions that there are about ten people who are crooked in terms of this economy.  You have also said today that the corporates are in charge of the runaway inflation or currency.  We have not seen any of these people being arrested and there is strong mistrust between your Ministry and the public in that they believe that all the corruption is on the exchange rate within the Reserve Bank. I do not know how you can undo that to the public to say why do you not arrest those people because we cannot continue to be told that there are crooks or thieves.

HON. PROF. M. NCUBE:  We now know these crooked individuals.  Some of them have already been arrested and some have been fined.  I think that the honey-pot of doing the illegal activities is so rich that some of them keep coming back in one form or another.  Those are the facts.  So we have to keep on arresting them and re-arresting them, fining them and re-fining them.  That is what we have been doing.  It is not that we are not doing anything.  We are certainly doing something and dealing with them. We are still going through this transition of both currencies and we need to live with some of these ugly facts but we are dealing with the culprits and we are fining them.

On the trust between the public and the Ministry – there is very good trust between the public and the Ministry such that when I go around the country, I engage very well with citizens.  I have no problems engaging with any citizens.  Citizens appreciate a lot of things that the Government is doing and I have a long list of things; whether it is the quality of the roads, the quality of the dams and what we have done through the Pfumvudza/Intwasa programme to empower our citizens.  All that is tax payers’ money coming through Treasury or the Government. Certainly, I do not get a sense that there is mistrust.  There is a lot of trust.  What the public does not trust imbavha idzi – that is the truth.  Really, Government is committed to make sure that we bring to book anyone who is malcontent as far as this challenge is concerned.

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