Finance and Economic Development Minister, Professor Mthuli Ncube says the Government through the 2022 national budget is revamping the country’s hospital infrastructure as well as working on the reduction of Non Communicable Diseases (NCDs).
Speaking during a post budget stakeholders meeting in Harare, Professor Ncube said treasury had increased excise duty on tobacco and energy drinks as a result of the surge in non-communicable diseases.
“When it comes to the healthcare sector, we have allocated quite a bit of budget for the healthcare sector including additional vaccines if we need to because we are now talking to a booster vaccine as well. We are revamping hospital infrastructure as well as sourcing equipment to equip our hospitals.
“The healthcare sector is being looked after very well. In addition to that we said hang on what are we doing about Non Communicable Diseases (NCD) that are on the rise that is cancer, hypertension and diabetes. That’s how we increased the excise duty on tobacco and energy drinks so that we raise resources for the NCD fund to capitalize it and then use resources to make drugs more accessible to our diabetic patients, cancer patients and those on hypertension,” said Ncube
The Minister said the national budget themed Reinforcing Sustainable Economic Recovery and Resilience was premised on two key shocks.
“So you can see in terms of our thinking about how we are dealing about the issue of resilience to the Covid-19 pandemic shock and climate shock. However, all of this has to be done within a stable macroeconomic environment that’s why the budget is speaking of macro-economic stability starting with the fiscus so that we do not have run away deficits,” he said.
Ncube said the reinforcing sustainable economic recovery was focusing the economic growth aspect
