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Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa holds a briefcase containing the 2017 National Budget outside Parliament building in Harare last week

Conrad Mwanawashe Business Reporter
Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa last week took the market, investors and the public on a tour of the back end of Government.

During that tour, Minister Chinamasa also took along development partners revealing Government’s new thrust in the administration of the economy premised on transparency, accountability and collaboration.

As he presented the 2017 National Budget Statement Minister Chinamasa removed the veil on how Government collects, distributes and administers economic resources. His statement was punctuated by admission of Government’s shortcomings, the challenging situation regarding revenue collection and lack of capacity to meet budgetary requests.

More importantly, Minister Chinamasa showed that Government, from now, will promote transparency and accountability in fiscal administration.

Transparency and accountability are inseparable twins because one cannot be transparent and yet not accountable. And again one cannot profess to be accountable if they are not transparent.

This is so because transparency provides the public with a yardstick with which to measure accountability. Accountability cannot be measured if there has been no transparency.

In that regard, Minister Chinamasa gave away useful information on the operations of Government particularly expenditure, revenue, financing mechanisms and what he felt would have been done better.

At the back end of Government, the Minister made it clear that the fundamental challenge to the economy remains that of under-production across all sectors of the economy and that the economy continues to be characterised by low production, import dependency, low savings, low incomes, high formal unemployment as well as liquidity and cash challenges.

As a result of the challenges on revenue collections, targets were continuously revised downwards during the year.

Already, the country knows from Mr Chinamasa that the spill over effect of some of the prevailing economic challenges into the first part of 2017 will constrain revenue collections.

Also, the market knows that Government has been using Treasury Bills to meet expenditures and deficit financing.

Transparency is critical because Government is an agent for the facilitation of business. Business cannot thrive in murky environments.

Therefore, opening up to the citizenry and business in general is important for four reasons; first- investors need as much information about economic performance as possible.

Second — business requires information to make decisions and to take strategic positions.

Third — the public’s opinion Government is critical the survival of the administration.

Four — development partners need information for future reference.

This level of transparency is critical in so much as it gives confidence to investors and the general public.

Potential investors use information provided by Government and other international indicators to decide on whether or not to release funds.

As economist Dr Davison Gomo said there is need to bridge the gap between Government and its citizens. Dr Gomo said at the moment the reality is that Government has one perception of itself but the public has another and as long as there is no consensus in terms of those realities.

As a result, Government will be pulling in one direction and society another. There is need to bridge that and transparency can help bridge that gap.

A national budget serves to provide information for business from which it constructs strategies.

Therefore, what Minister Chinamasa did provided business with information which it can use to make decisions and to take strategic positions for 2017. Showing business the back end of Government will be interpreted as a show of goodwill by the State.

And this is critical to build alliances for collaboration. Government’s partners need to know the thinking around certain policies so that they can engage from a position of knowledge.

Furthermore, development partners are very worry with a Government that is not transparent. Where a Government is not forthcoming, development partners withhold their purse.

Therefore, Zimbabwe should not alienate itself from the rest of the world by closing itself.

For Government it is often challenging to decide as to how much to information or material to “give away”.