Zim is on its own, says finance minister

FINANCE Minister Patrick Chinamasa hinted on Friday that Zimbabwe had been abandoned by the international financial institutions on whom it had pinned its hopes for economic revival and was now literally on its own.

The minister indicated in his speech that the country would have to stand on its own in terms of sourcing critical credit lines.

He all but appeared to have given up on his earlier attempts to implement costcutting reforms as a condition demanded by the international community for financial bailout.

Speaking at a Zimra Taxpayer’s Appreciation Awards ceremony on Friday, Chinamasa said with little prospect of getting external support, the government now needed to seriously step up efforts to get money from the informal sector to fill in the gaps.

This comes amid reports that investors have adopted a wait-and-see attitude in the wake of worrying and unusual policy shifts from the government – the latest being the trashing of Chinamasa’s proposal to cut the civil service wage bill.

The finance minister had proposed to cut the number of civil servants, their allowances, as well as suspending bonuses for two years.

Within days of the announcement of these proposals, the minister had been shot down by a fellow cabinet minister, who declared Chinamasa’s proposals had no cabinet approval and were therefore null and void.

Chinamasa said the AU had encouraged African economies to intensify domestic mobilisation efforts as development aid might be a thing of the past.

“What this means is that as individual countries, we can no longer rely on development assistance to support our budgets. In the case of Zimbabwe, we have not had any budgetary support from outside for a very long time,” he said.

“In truth, therefore, we are on our own. We now have to seriously look at domestic mobilisation as paramount to our economic development.” – All Africa Global Media