FULL TEXT: 2025 National Budget Is Anti-people, Anti-business And Anti-Zimbabwe - CCC

Statement by the opposition Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) faction led by Welshman Ncube on the 2024 national budget presented by Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube on Thursday:

Citizens Coalition for Change Statement on 2025 budget statement

The recent national budget proposal exposes the Zanu PF government’s obnoxious penchant to compulsorily expropriate people’s money to the last cent to fund the honchos lavish lifestyle.

As Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) we are of the conviction that the fundamental error in the budget statement was failure to understand what makes a nation succeed.

Our success must move from a government that is just a tax collector to one that enables economic growth and create jobs. Our people are suffering idleness.

A CCC government will implement the following budget policies:

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1. Ensure job creation by funding youth and women innovation funnels and entrepreneurial development

2. Cut off middlemen often called “buyers” in the mineral value chain by enhancing capacity of the Minerals Marketing Authority to Zimbabwe and Fidelity Printers. This will prevent pilferage and haemorrhage of precious minerals for the benefit of the select few.

3. Empower communities through revenue share of mineral wealth through community ownership schemes run by trusts.

4. Drive innovation, partnerships and good governance to have part of mineral wealth exploited fully by exclusive mining by Zimbabwe Mining Development Fund.

5. Fund rural value addition in agriculture, organise communities and offer export incentives. Develop and deploy rural industrial hubs and access to market schemes.

6. Have robust fiscal regime that curtail non-value adding imports whilst growing local capacity.

7. Invest in science and technology including innovation hubs that go beyond the familiar of copying and pasting already existing ideas.

8. Re-invent the idea of growth points as centres of economic success stories and as places to live and thrive for the youth.

9. Increase tax collection by simplifying the tax code and offer tax breaks for Small Micro and medium enterprises.

10. Reform, fund and refine technical college training to enable massive export of labour on a government to government agreement.

11. Negotiate taxations agreement that enable additional tax benefit from the Zimbabwe trained diaspora benefitting foreign governments.

12. Simplify license, permits and tax payments to simplify the cost of doing business so as to attract investment and prevent underground economy.

As CCC we believe in the importance of health for all. Taxes should not be used to punish citizens and corporates. A CCC government will do the following:

1. Establish a lean collecting agent for lifestyle taxes including but not limited to sugar tax, airtime and data tax, tobacco and cigarette surtax, and other health related tax collections

2. Ensure a 100% free tax regime for health service firms and PAYE exemption of health service workers.

3. Initiate a council that encompass Aids, TB, Cancer, Diabetes and Hypertension instead of just one that cares for HIV and AIDS.

The education budget allocation greatness is that it exceeds the Maputo Declaration albeit that 16% of nothing is nothing. A one size fits all model causes inordinate tax burdens.

As a CCC government we shall cover 100% of rural schools’ budget, 70% for high-density schools, 50% of low-densityschools and 0% of private schools.

Presenting a budget on the mantra of “Building Resilience for Sustained Economic Transformation” is a loud sounding nothing when in the statement the anchor remains agriculture and mining.

A CCC government will drive economic diversification as a strategic imperative. Further we shall ensure the entire Zimbabwe is a special economic zone for 5 years to attract and retain investment then create jobs.

The country’s economy is largely formal. Introducing corporate tax as a panacea solves nothing in our view. A CCC government will drive a program to simplify the tax code including licensing and permit codes.

We shall liaise with professional bodies to further simplify reporting standards of small enterprises. This will enable easy and cost-effective compliance.

A decentralized area-based Zimra booth is a simple idea but effective. Capturing the formal into informal shall be done with massive reduction of tax heads and tax amounts.

As a CCC government our intention is to collapse ministries with insignificant allocations and or make them departments.

Allocations should be alive to value creation ministries more. We shall discard incremental budgets and implement value and activity-based budgeting.

It is sad that civil servants’ welfare was largely ignored in this budget. As CCC government we shall benchmark salaries to regional standards with a first-year premium of a higher cost of living in the country.

The budget is based on a ZiG conversion that is sub optimal and false. It’s a lie. As CCC government in our first year of office we shall base our budget on US dollar, discard the ZiG and then deploy a mono currency in the second year.

The diaspora rights particularly the right to vote could increase diaspora remittances and promotion of import substitution to help the balance of payments and the current account.

The budget is anti-people, anti-business and anti-Zimbabwe. It must be rejected.

Willias Madzimure

Party Spokesperson

Citizens Coalition for Change

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