ED doing his best to promote sound economic governance

By Rongai Chizema

President Emmerson Dambudzo (ED) Mnangagwa is trying his best to promote sound economic governance – one of the strengths of the new dispensation so far.

Economic governance is an area a few people have paid attention to, but we have done a lot as a nation in that area. An example to justify this is the Open Budget Index. Our performance in this area has been encouraging.

Apparently, because of currency problems, budgetary disbursements get eroded, and value for money is lost, yet from a budget process and public finance systems angle, we would have done our best.

The Comptroller and Auditor General have done good reports since 2017 to date, though the Executive (Ministry of Home Affairs and the Zimbabwe Anti Corruption Commission), have not bothered to pursue the cash. In some cases it’s not about ED, it’s about Office bearers who politicize simple issues.

We have during the late President Robert Mugabe’s time done irregular things. For instance, coming up with the Reserve bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) Debt Assumption Bill to protect people who got RBZ funded farm equipment. It was very wrong, but Parliament passed the Bill. Why? Maybe because even opposition MPs also found it good not to pay back.

Now, no one wants to invest in Zim because the Law of Contract is applied racially. Having the Bill go through Parliament is all good economic and political governance. Throwing it out of Parliament is something else.

Former RBZ Governor Dr. Gono appeared on Trevor Ncube’s podium and said during Smith’s time, whites had privileged access to loans. That’s hogwash. He is lying. He has now swung from being a Governor to being a politician. It’s very sad. It’s damaging to economic governance and worse public finance.

Politicians are very selfish naturally if not checked. Apparently, we do not recognize it. It’s our fault in most of these cases. We have RBZ legislate that Bond Notes are equal to US$1. We know it’s wrong, but we keep quiet and the legislation comes through Parliament. We sign it and cry later. It’s very sad. The power to fix that is in the voters through their elected Office bearers – Parliamentarians. It’s sad that we do not push them to hold the Executive (Government and RBZ) to account. It’s terrible, yet systems and legislation offer us the opportunity to fix all that.