eBusiness Weekly
HARARE – Presentation of the 2019 National Budget has been set for November 22 this year, Parliament heard on Wednesday.
Responding to questions in the National Assembly, Finance and Economic Development Minister Prof Mthuli Ncube said the budget would focus more on reducing government expenditure pattern which currently takes a huge chunk of the national cake.
“One of our budget priorities is to cut back on the travel budget and the general waste by government and this is very strong in my budget,” he said.
“We are still working on our budget, I am going to present our budget statement at the end of November, on 22nd of November and then at that stage I will be able to say when I will be able to provide Members of Parliament with transport,” he said in response to a question on when the government would purchase vehicles for Parliamentarians.
The 2019 National Budget is expected to bring measures to strengthen revenue collection and minimizing government expenditure to reduce the ballooning budget deficit which stood at $1.12 billion by June, according to the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development.
According to the pre-budget strategy paper, a drastic reduction n of the budget deficit to 5.2 percent of GDP in 2019 is targeted.
“The budget statement will be more precise in terms of addressing expenditure, overall wage bill and travel. All these are obtained in the pre-budget strategy paper. Next week we will have the opportunity to discuss further as to how we are going to deal with issues on how government can adjust is expenditure,” said the Minister.
According to the paper, revenue collections for the first half of the year amounted to $2.51 billion against a target of $2.21 billion, resulting in a positive variance of $0.30 billion.
However, total government expenditure during the same period stood at $3.72 billion against targeted expenditure of $2.60 billion, implying an expenditure over-run of $ 1.12 billion. – New Ziana