Opposition politician Tendai Biti dismisses the Midterm Budget Review presented by the Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Professor Mthuli Ncube, describing it as ‘a morbid act of uninspiring rubble’.
Biti who was Finance minister during the Government of National Unity (GNU), said this review was evidence of how the regime is out of touch with reality on the ground.
In strongly worded comments on micro blogging site, Twitter, the outspoken Biti said Minister Ncube erroneously ignored creating a supplementary budget despite government setting aside an unbudgeted ZWL18 billion Covid rescue package.
Biti also the failure to address general economic decline and lack of productivity, hyperinflation and shortages, eroded public service wages, COVID &safety nets, the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange and corruption were key oversights.
Biti said the Mid Term Review offered a major opportunity of addressing the huge melt down arresting the economy with an obligation to also address
“Any doubt about the limitations, failure & cluelessness of the regime would have been dispelled by the regime’s vacuous and insipid midterm Fiscal Review this afternoon. What a morbid act of uninspiring rubble, a damp squib if ever there was one. Emmerson (and) his lot have failed
“Instead it was a tale of self-serving glorification & mendacious projections A-4.5 % GDP projection for 2020 is fiction, so too a V shaped recovery leading to a 7% growth in 2021. The claimed budget surplus of $800m ignores impact of inflation on revenue& underfunding of projects
The failure to bring in a Supplementary Budget was deception at its best. Last month’s new wage allowances need funding so too the $18.2 billion Covid package. Ignoring the closures of the ZSE & Ecocash was criminal, so too (was) failure to address distortions in markets (tobacco & cotton),” said Biti.
He added, “Truth of the matter is (that) ZANU & Emmerson have failed beyond the limits of failure .There is no more point in addressing such failure. An urgent disruptive solution required to take our country forward. In this quest for salvation all hands must be on deck, we have a duty to act no.”
Biti also said that this gives credence to the claims of the opposition which argues that there current economic crisis is precipitated by a political crisis emanating from disputed 2018 elections.
He said government must urgently engage in currency reform and re-dollarisation, fiscal consolidation, resolving land question, debt cancellation, infrastructure and social agenda to redeem the nation.
These sentiments were widely shared across social media, where concerned Zimbabweans are rallying behind planned 31 July protests, led by Jacob Ngarivhume and aimed at forcing the hand of government to arrest an economy in free fall.
The Mid Term review also projected that key sectors including mining, the bedrock of the new dispensation’s economic revival, projected to shrink by 4.1% would suffer significant negative growth.
