5% salary cut for Zimbabwe president, senior civil servants in 2019

Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister has announced a 5 percent cut in the salaries of the president, ministers and senior civil servants, effective January, 2019.

Finance Minister, Mthuli Ncube said this will help clear the pay roll of ghost names and reduce spending by the state as he presented the 2019 budget to parliamentarians on Thursday.

“I know the minister is aware that we are experiencing drug shortages at the moment and that there is a lot to do in the health sector so that we can cope with what we face”, said health minister, Orbadiah Moyo.

“We can always be looking for funding from the government, we need to consider partnerships, joint ventures, SPV is the way to go, especially with regard to some of the projects, because they will pay for themselves’‘, said Joram Gumbo, Minister of Energy and Energy Development.

Salaries of public servants absorb close to 90 percent of Zimbabwe’s income, plunging it into an economic crisis for two decades. Zimbabwe’s finance minister said he expects a 3.1 percent growth next year.

The $6.6 billion 2019 budget also provides $53 million in compensation to white farmers displaced from their lands as part of ex-president Robert Mugabe’s controversial land reforms.

On the orders of the then-ruling Zanu-PF party, thousands of white farmers were expelled from their lands in the early 2000s and given to black farmers.

The aim of the initiative was to correct the inequalities inherited from British colonization.

Emmerson Mnangagwa succeeded Robert Mugabe in November 2017 after the latter was forced out of office after thirty-seven years of an authoritarian rule.

Mnangagwa promised to revive the economy. But in October, monthly inflation reached 20% and the country has recently returned to shortages of commodities, such as sugar, bread, oil, gasoline and medicines.

AFP