The Zimbabwe Lands Commission plans to audit about 60 000 farms this year. The land audit is aimed at bringing fairness and transparency as well as accountability in the agricultural sector.
The audit will be carried out in all gazetted categories of land. These include old resettlement schemes, A1 villages, A1 self-contained, A2 small-medium and large-scale commercial farms, small-scale commercial farms, commercial agricultural plots and the three-tier farms.
Presenting its budgetary requirement for 2019, the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Lands revealed:
… increase farms audited from 0 to 300 000 by 31 December 2021, which would imply that in 2019, about 100 000 farms would need to be audited. However, the Commission has set a target of 60 000 farms being audited in 2019, due to resource constraints.
As part of its recommendations, the Committee said:
A lot of Government programmes aimed at supporting farmers are not taking off due to failure to bring the land reform exercise to completion. The issuance of 99-year leases is also preventing the ease at which farmers can unlock financing of the farming activities. The committee is, therefore, recommending that resources for the land audit programme be increased.