Govt earns $317million

The latest statistics from the Ministry of Finance show that government collected US$183,1 million in July and US$144,4 million in August this year, a far cry from the US$400 million government needs monthly. Only US$900 million was collected between January and June this year. The bulk of the revenue came from taxes, which are generating meagre amounts in an economy where unemployment is high and many businesses have collapsed.

But analysts said it was a hopeful sign that the ministry was producing figures on a regular basis at all. This is a welcome development. For so long nobody had a clue what was happening in the government fiscus, said one prominent analyst.

Zimbabweans had high hopes that the unity government agreement between President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai would halt a decline that Mugabe blames on Western sanctions but critics say was caused by his patronage system.

Finance Minister Tendai Biti said the economy remained plagued by a weak revenue base, and the average of US$140 million a month that was being collected was grossly insufficient.

“For all intents and purposes if this economy has to achieve the 1999 GDP of US$9billion, we have to be collecting the sum of US$400million a month. There is a huge gap,” Biti said, adding that the economy, emerging from a decade-long decline, was still plagued by an almost total absence of capital in the form of lines of investment, foreign direct investment and lines of credit.

The uncertainty of the global political was a major challenge weighing down the economy. “The second major challenge is the lack of commonality among the politicians in the inclusive government, the lack of a common vision, and the failure to depoliticise politics from the management of this economy,” Biti said.

Western donors have withheld development finance because of the skewed power sharing in the GNU, even though they have pumped in millions in humanitarian assistance.