by Ronny Zikhali

FINANCE minister, Mr Tendai Biti, has underlined the budgetary policies to be inherited from this year’s national budget into the 2010/11 budget.
Speaking at a national budget consultative process meeting in Bulawayo last Friday, Minister Biti said the 2011 budget would be premised on the continued use of the multiple currencies state budgeting.
“We will continue using multiple currencies in 2011…We will continue with state budgeting, I belief in a philosophy of spending that which you have and again if you tell us to spend that which we don’t have we will refuse even though we are democratic so don’t tell us that.
The third thing, which you cannot persuade us on, is the issue of the liberalization of this economy, the issue of opening up this economy so that business can thrive. The fourth is that next year we will reflect on what we achieve in our last budget despite what you are going tell us today,” he said.
The Ministry has already held budget consultative meetings in Mutare and Masvingo.
“A budget is a very important strategic instrument of managing very meagre national resources and therefore managing those resources becomes a serious act that requires fiscal marksmanship.
“Firstly the budget must be proximity to the people’s aspiration or demands, secondly the budget must be practical in the sense that it must address the really concerns of the people and thirdly it must be policy oriented it must not be populist, it must be really, it must be pragmatic and it must be predictable.
“Those are the four main “Ps” of the budget and that is what we have come here to see if this budget is going to be pragmatic,” Minister Biti said.
He said Government would not reach its expected 2009/10 budget of US$2.2 billion owing to lack of direct foreign investment.
“In 2009 the budget was US$2.2 billion dollars measured against our own revenues of 1.4 billion, we thought and expected that the bulk of the income would come of from our friends in the international community of donors.
“So the budget had a shortfall of US$810 million dollars, nine months into the year it is self evident that we are not going to meet that US$810 million dollars, therefore we say we were not pragmatic in our budget vis-à-vis our donor attractiveness to Zimbabwe and we have to avoid that in 2011,” Minister Biti said.