South African Based businessman, Joseph Makamba Busha, says President Emmerson Mnangagwa should be wary of his cabinet Ministers who are “lying” to him about economic progress when, in fact, the country is digressing.
Busha said Mnangagwa should not hire “liars” like Professor Mthuli Ncube whom he said misrepresented the nation when he said the government was making a surplus from the 2% transactional tax.
The Finance Minister is on record boasting that the nation, for the first time in years, has recorded a surplus due to the government’s ‘disciplined’ spending.
In April this year, Zimbabwe and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reached agreement on macroeconomic policies and structural reforms that can underpin a Staff Monitored Program (SMP) that aims to implement a coherent set of policies that can facilitate a return to macroeconomic stability.
“Zimbabwe can’t have a surplus when it has no medication and no capital investment. Professor Mthuli Ncube is not allocating the tax he collects to social services.
“He is giving figures at the current inflation rate yet the value of the tax money has not grown. Investor confidence is not created by telling untruths,” Busha said.
Contrary to Mthuli’s claims, Zimbabwe is facing deep macroeconomic imbalances. After a period of relative macroeconomic stability when hyperinflation was broken in 2008 with the move to full dollarization, the fiscal situation has deteriorated sharply since 2015.
Large fiscal deficits during 2016–18, financed by the issuance of quasi-currency instruments nominally at par to the U.S. dollar, built-up pressure in the previously dollarized economy.
The fragile equilibrium was maintained by exchange controls and other restrictions on access to foreign exchange.
Busha said Mthuli stopped investing money back into the market to create a fictitious surplus.
“He should start investing back into the economy for us to believe that he surely has a surplus but for as long as there is nothing in that regard, it remains a fallacy,” he noted.
