In defence of Biti’s budget

With unemployment currently pegged at over 90 per cent, Zimbabwe desperately needs triggers for driving the economy forward. Biti’s budget succinctly makes the case for Diaspora returnees to seriously consider investing in their homeland.

What this budget simply means is that it’s time to ship my ‘gonyet’, my tractor, my F250 and the rest of the equipment lying idle in my garage for all this time. According to Biti’s budget, I only have to worry about shipping costs, said an excited Norman Phiri, who has been in the Diaspora for close to a decade.

Measures contained in the budget, such as abolishing import duties on capital investment equipment and technology-related products, represent massive opportunities for entrepreneurs and small businesses. Numerous downstream industries will also be created in the process. The effects on the national economy will be felt immediately.

While some have selfishly argued that removing or reducing import duties on computers, cellular handsets, telephone sets and printers, will hurt local industries, such thinking wildly assumes that local industry was functional. When was the last time Zimbabwe produced computers or components for computer manufacturing? Biti has simply created more opportunities for a greater number of people. The recently announced budget promotes the much needed entrepreneurship, one of the key engines for economic growth.

In the USA, small businesses form the backbone of the economy as they create most of the new employment (over 90 per cent of all new jobs) and represent more than 50 per cent of all private work force. According to the US Small Business Administration, small businesses represent 99.7 per cent of all firms. US small businesses constitute the world’s second largest economy, trailing only the US.

Tailored banking
In that regard, the government of Zimbabwe has to do more to promote small businesses. With an ‘over-banked’ economy for its size, Zimbabwe must encourage the emergence of a bank specifically focusing on lending to small businesses and individual entrepreneurs. There is need for a fully-fledged agency that focuses specifically on entrepreneurship and small businesses.

Amid a backdrop of a mildly improving business environment (a direct product of lukewarm political progress), there is guarded optimism from many Zimbabweans in the Diaspora who are feeling the urge to play a meaningful role in redeveloping the homeland. While Biti has set the right tone, one would expect that by now the government of Zimbabwe would already have put in place a robust mechanism to mobilize Diasporans to leverage on its human and financial capital. Zimbabwe’s devastating brain drain has to be counteracted by a deliberate brain gain campaign.

Some of the practical steps to raise the much needed cash include the issuing of government securities with attractive yields, specifically targeting the Diaspora. There was a similar program in Sri Lanka where the government managed to raise more than US$500 million from its Diaspora by way of government securities.

Another route is the equivalent of India’s Persons of Indian Origin card (PIO) which offers preferential deals that attract Indians in the Diasporans back to India. Upon purchase of a US$1000 card, members get preferential deals. For instance, import duty exemptions for a long period, discounts, employment opportunities, as well as VIP treatment at Customs Boarder Posts. Finally the government has to swiftly communicate the admissibility of dual citizenships as these offer practical advantages to Diasporans who are still sceptical about Zimbabwe’s political stability.

Compassionate budget
Biti’s budget is perhaps the most compassionate in history. He has budgeted US$32 million to take care of ‘vulnerable groups’ such as child-headed families.

In a country where its poor (seven million according to UN estimates) are largely surviving on food donations from international aid agencies, allowing food imports duty-free is the humane thing to do. All the same, Biti allocated US$146 million to help with inputs for small scale farmers. However, the future of Zimbabwe’s agriculture lies in mechanization, not subsistence farming.

As expected the fiercest bashing of this noble budget had to come from our ‘knowledgeable friend’ – Jonathan Moyo, an ultra-partisan Zanu (PF) operative plotting in the shadows. Moyo, who derives a lot of satisfaction from hectoring, undermining and condescending anything coming from MDC -T, did not miss the opportunity to do what he does best gibbering! But these rants cannot go unchallenged.

In a thinly-veiled endorsement of Mugabe’s recent calls for reviving the condemned Zimbabwe dollar, Moyo echoed his ‘king’, regurgitating the same mindless talking points. Moyo said that the poor and the unemployed have no chance of accessing any of the circulating multi-currencies. Zimbabwe’s economy is in the state it is today because of the likes of Mugabe and Moyo.

The sobering experience of hyperinflation finally convinced Zimbabwe’s politicians of the urgent need to address the economic cataclysm. Unfortunately Moyo is enemy number one of Zimbabwe’s inclusive government.

Enemy number one
Every sane Zimbabwean knows that Zanu (PF)s politics are monkey business. In 2005 Mugabe fired Moyo from his ministerial post of information having branded him enemy number one. Moyo was abruptly ordered to vacate the villa from where he spewed most of his stressful propaganda. However, Moyo pleaded with the High Court to delay the eviction, pitifully squirming, “I have no place to which I can relocate my family at such short notice.

Moyo plotted the most dreadful and repressive laws in the country. He muzzled free press and freedom of expression. Some of his best known indelible footprints include his scary verbal attacks on the Daily News which culminated in a military-style attack of the paper. His leadership in architecting AIPA and POSA is ineradicable as it is still causing untold misery to media practitioners and journalists. This man should not be worthy of our attention given his dark recent past.

Does Moyo’s recent lament that the budget opens floodgates for hostile foreign information into Zimbabwe by eliminating all customs duty on newspapers? surprise anybody?
The people of Zimbabwe have long rejected propaganda from State-controlled media outlets like the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation and the Herald. Removing import duty of 40 per cent on foreign newspapers was quite daring. The mere thought of Zimbabwe finally having free press is disconcerting to those who have enjoyed monopoly of the press for so long.

But again, what does he know about business? For the sake of moving the nation forward, let’s ask him to present an alternative budget or at least offer constructive ideas.