‘Treasury registers $100m running surplus’
GOVERNMENT’s Transitional Stabilisation Programme (TSP) is bearing positive results with Treasury having been able to register a running surplus of $100 million in the last four months, the Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Professor Mthuli Ncube, has said.
Speaking on ZBCtv current affairs programme, Face The Nation on Wednesday evening, Prof Ncube said Government was walking the talk on the objectives of the TSP, launched last October in a bid to set the economy on a recovery path after years of stagnation.
“We are walking the talk on the objectives of the TSP. The first order of business we said let’s fix the fiscus to make sure that we live within our means.
“We are doing that, in the last four months we have been able to record a running surplus of $100 million and that has been very helpful in dealing with . . . such as cyclone and so forth and we are taking that from the two percent tax,” he said.
Prof Ncube said Government would also invest more in the social sector in order to deal with real improvement of people’s lives looking at infrastructural development in the areas of schools and health facilities.
“But also we are going to be investing more in the social sector over time so this sector is going to be used for dealing with real improvement of the lives of people, the hospitals, schools; we are going to be investing in that.
“It is also supporting the devolution agenda, which again is empowering the provinces and making sure that there is better spatial inclusion right across the economy, so that’s on the fiscal front,” he said.
“We have not used the Reserve Bank window, not a cent we’ve used from the Reserve Bank overdraft facility in the last three months and we are determined to keep it like that.”
The TSP acknowledges policy reform initiatives of the new dispensation to stimulate domestic production, exports, rebuilding and transforming the economy to an upper middle income status by 2030.
Prof Ncube said as a result of the implementation of the TSP, Government has for the first time in 10 years been able to pay wages for civil servants from a cashpositive position since January this year.
“Moving onto that, let’s look into the monetary sector reforms. These have been instituted in record time in the sense that now we have an inter-bank market.
“We have a pricing system that will speak to a market mechanism that will speak to every player in the private sector. Earlier we discussed how we can further strengthen that,” he said.
“The first order of business is to make sure that we keep the fiscus tight so that the fiscus do e s n’ t b e come a source of inflation; a source of e xc e s s ive money supply that will make the exchange rate unstable, that we have to manage.”
T h e Finance Minister said they will also further strengthen the framework of the monetary sector by making sure that the monetary policy committee was in place to support the whole process and the Government may even fine tune the monetary targets. At present, the monetary authorities are targeting high-powered money, which is that part of the money supply that is directly under the control of a country’s central bank. Prof Ncube said they would also make sure that the whole microinfrastructure around the exchange rate market is strengthened and the monetary authorities were already working with the International Monetary Fund for advice on how to do that. Turning to the Government agenda on improving the environment for doing business, he said this was on course and a Bill around the Zimbabwe Investment and Development Agency (Zida) will be concluded soon to promote a one-stop investment centre and lure investors from across the world. “We will be concluding the Bill around Zida for the one-stop investment centre to make sure investors find it easy to come through the market and that’s a product of three institutions, which are being collapsed into one. “We are catching up with the rest of the world in terms of improving the environment for doing business,” Prof Ncube said. — @ okazunga.