FINANCE, Economic Development and Investment Promotion minister Mthuli Ncube must be reminded that economic leadership is not about repeatedly turning to the taxpayer each time the system finds the going getting tough.
Every time the economy shows signs of distress, instead of tackling the root causes, the Finance minister comes up with another tax from his bag of tricks, piling more pressure on already overburdened citizens.
From the informal trader in Mbare to the struggling civil servant in Munyikwa, Gutu, ordinary citizens are tightening belts that have long since run out of notches.
Instead of relief, they are met with policies that are do not reflect what is on the ground, that are divorced from reality.
Taxing the poor is not a recovery strategy — it’s a shortcut that deepens inequality and stalls growth.
The country needs innovative economic thinking, real structural reforms and bold productivity-focused strategies — not a continued dependence on revenue extraction.
Taxation should be a tool of development, not a substitute for visionary governance.
It’s time Ncube restores economic confidence not through levies, but through leadership that listens, plans and delivers.
With the Mid-Term Budget Review Ncube presented this past Thursday, Ncube clearly revealed that businesses and the ordinary citizens are shaking in their boots as a result of his policies, which are making businesses go off the rail.
“We have a situation where in some sectors, players or private players are only profitable if they don’t comply with regulatory requirements,” he said.
“If they comply, they make losses and that situation needs to be changed.
We will lower the cost of doing business.”
What Ncube is basically telling us is that the Zimbabwean environment and the compliance routes are too expensive to do business.
What we are noticing with his budgets since being appointment as Finance minister is that each and every one of them has turned out to be disastrous.
Zimbabweans are waiting with bated breath to see when he will do the right thing for the economy so that it can extricate itself out of the intensive care unit (ICU).
Source: NewsDay Zimbabwe
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