As was largely expected, the Mid-Term Policy Statement presented by Finance Minister Tendai Biti on Wednesday was a damp squib: nothing for civil servants, nothing for agriculture, but instead

increased duty for imported flour and fuel.
The minister revised the budget downwards by 10 percent to US$3,6 billion and more significantly reviewed the growth targets from the overly optimistic 9,4 percent to a moderate 5,6 percent driven mainly by the poor performance of the agriculture sector.

On the exports front, while there was a significant growth of 45 percent over the past six months to US$1,6 billion these were overwhelmingly cancelled out with our import bill of US$2,6 billion.
There was nothing in the budget for the hard-pressed civil servants as the gloomy outlook means that Minister Biti will maintain his rhetoric that he has limited fiscal space.

Naturally this is a very emotive issue which will most certainly touch the lives of the country’s largest block of employees that at one point threatened to embark on a nationwide strike to press for the improvement of their working conditions.
It should, however, be noted that the civil servants are not alone in this debacle as it is cutting across the entire economy where their counterparts in industry and commerce are also struggling and retrenchments are the order of the day.

It is actually more worrying that in his admission, Minister Biti said Government was faced with the risk of failing to pay the workers’ monthly salaries.
Realistically, the budget continues to be overburdened by the civil service wage bill, consuming a massive 70 percent and thus leaving very little for recurrent expenditure and infrastructure development, all key to the turnaround of the economy.

For as long as the country remains under the illegal sanctions, there will be very little room to manoeuvre and we will continue operating under a cash budget. This calls for creative ways to remain afloat and one way is to mobilise all the productive forces to exploit our given resources be it in agriculture or mining.
But we definitely need to set our priorities right. There is need for Treasury to change its approach on funding of agriculture and view the sector as one of the pillars of our economic recovery. Starving this sector means other sectors that feed off it will also suffer.

Many downstream industries will definitely wake up once production from the farms is raised to the desired levels. Instead of merely focusing on the manufacturing sector that requires vast sums to resuscitate, the starting point should be production on the land and this does not require the huge sums required to recapitalise industry.

We are basically done with the agrarian reforms and the challenge we have now is to turn this into an agricultural revolution that would effectively silence the critics of this transforming initiative with results from the land.

However, this year’s funding for wheat farmers leaves a lot to be desired and this will come to haunt Minister Biti as he will have to look for money to import wheat, a product our farmers could have produced if they had received the desired support.

We cannot run away from the fact that our economy is agro-based and therefore all                 hope for recovery should be pinned on agriculture. And that means Minister Biti should rise above party politics and give more financial support to farmers.
It is critical for all Zimbabweans to view the challenges the country is facing in the national interest, and ask what it is that can be done to make things better for all.

There is a need to build on the positives, though. The fact that the country has managed to remain on course with inflation targets, the vast mineral resources, the immense human capital and the will power to achieve should drive us in the right direction.
We should ride on the successes achieved in the mining sector, which has seen us within the projected growth targets and continue to count on the sector to drive the future prospects. It is not all gloom and doom as this has to be viewed in the context that we are emerging from a decade of economic stagnation, have no currency

of our own and faced with old and dilapidated infrastructure that urgently requires replacement.

This is all a result of the devastating Western-backed sanctions, but we have no doubt that Zimbabweans will turn the corner if they all put their shoulders to the wheel.

The demands are many and the way forward demands that we remain focused.