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Innocent Ruwende Municipal Reporter
Government, through the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing has set new guidelines for local authorities with councils now required to present capital budgets of a minimum of 15 percent of total council budgets. According to the latest local authorities circular, capital budgets should be a minimum of 15 percent and a maximum of 25 percent of the total council budget.

It is also the ministry’s requirement that local authorities should be in line with 30:70 employment costs to service delivery ratio. According to the recent minutes of the Harare City Council, the city’s acting finance director Mr Tendai Kwenda told councillors that council had complied with the ministerial guideline.

“In compliance with the ministerial guideline, the city’s capital budget amounted to $103 million against a projected revenue budget of $345 million and this was 23 percent of the total budget.

“The acting finance director also reported that focus had been made on capacitation of building inspectorate to ensure efficient and effective supervision and monitoring of construction works and illegal activities in the city,” he said.

Mr Kwenda underscored that inputs from the budget consultative meetings with various stakeholders had also been considered in coming up with the estimates. He said it was anticipated that funding of the capital budget would be obtained from loans (51 percent), revenue contributions (26) and other sources 23.

The committee noted that the 2016 budget did not perform as expected due to delayed approval by the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing and tasked acting town clerk Mrs Josephine Ncube to engage responsible authorities to ensure timely approval of the 2017 council budget.

Harare’s 2016 budget was only conditionally approved in May this year.

According to a letter written by Local Government, Public Works and National Housing principal director (Urban Local Authorities), Ms Erica Jones, the budget was approved on condition that the city meets six directives which included reducing employment costs, reduction in permanent overdraft facility of $1,5 million as well as reducing bank accounts among other directives.

In its 2017 budget the city said 29,9 percent of the budget would fund salaries and allowances to the tune of $116,3 million, while the remaining 70,1 percent would go towards service delivery.