2021 National Budget Another Damp Squib As Expected, Says Biti

MDC Alliance vice president Tendai Biti, who is a former Finance Minister, said the 2021 national budget, presented by Treasury chief Mthuli Ncube this Thursday, is yet another “damp squib” as expected.

Biti said the reintroduction of the Zimbabwe dollar has failed and the government should have re-dollarised the economy to restore the real value of wages and pensions. Said Biti:

As expected this was yet another damp squib. A real missed opportunity to address the key distortion in the economy which is forex and monetary policy.

The fiction of Zimbabwe dollar is not working. The real value, real wages and real incomes needed to be restored. Maintaining Zimbabwe dollar fiction is madness.

The failure to restore USD wages and pensions is the ultimate theft and failure by the regime. Failure to deal decisively with pensions and the Justice Smith Inquiry recommendations is another disaster.

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Biti also castigated the tax measures proposed by Ncube in his 2021 national budget which include a 20% levy on the export sales value of dried medicinal cannabis flowers. Biti added:

The raft of tax measures proposed are anti-poor and anti-people particularly presumptive taxes

The tax attack in the informal economy, the levying of taxes in USD, the punitive taxes on fuel makes the 2021 budget is vicious anti-working-class budget.

Budget assumptions are a pipe dream and 7% GDP growth rate is an illusion. The country is trouble.