The Health ministry’s acting finance director Lynette Tennis has said late disbursement of funds is constraining the Health and Child Care ministry’s operations.
Tennis told the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Health during a workshop for legislators monitoring special drawing rights (SDR) projects on Tuesday 27 September 2022 that very few funds were being disbursed from the 2022 health budget.
The workshop was facilitated by the Southern Africa Parliamentary Support Trust, NewsDay reported. Tennis said:
The releases have been too little to make an impact to whatever we have to do as the Ministry of Health to achieve our mandate. The hospitals have not been getting support from the Ministry of Finance and as we move forward we received a circular in August that made it worse saying there is need for due diligence to be taken for all procurement that is being done. We are yet to get responses for whatever we submitted to them.
Funds have not been coming to the ministry, releases have been too little for the ministry, and we have not been getting support from Treasury. We managed to get 11% of our capital budget and we always ask when the other is going to come.
Tennis added that the ministry had not received any release from the Finance ministry since August 2022.
She added that the ministry still has challenges in the procurement of medicines because the Finance Ministry is not releasing funds, they cite cash-flow challenges.
Her remarks come at a time when South African health officials are accusing Zimbabweans of worsening that country’s problems in the health sector.
They say thousands of Zimbabweans were flocking to South African hospitals to get medical assistance.
Finance minister Mthuli Ncube allocated ZW$117.7 billion (14.9%) of the ZW$968.2 billion 2022 national budget to the Health ministry.