Mr. Speaker, support for loss making enterprises. Government paid former white farmers $134 million as compensation for land seized since 2000. The amount had not been set aside in the initial budget and that is very poor planning. $134 million paid to former white commercial farmers and the money had not been budgeted for, where did that money come from?
Mr. Speaker, if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail. Ben Gilpin of Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) says he is unaware of who has been compensated. So the money went to white farmers and yet the person who is representing the white farmers says, no, I do not even know where the money went to. I will not be surprised if next year we get another batch of white commercial farmers wanting to be paid. The same names that are appearing on the list today will come next year saying we still need to be compensated. This year’s deficit previously focused at $400 million is also expected to increase to nearly $120 million due to maize subsidy. The scheme is open to abuse and we saddle the economy with more debt.
The next slide, I continue to talk about the budget deficit. The former Reserve Bank Governor, Dr. Gono, with all his faults said one thing that is very instructive. He said that 75% of the problems that we have in this country are as a result of corruption. Zimbabwe is ranked 154 out of 175 countries according to the corrupt perception index. Auditor-General, Mildred Chiri, recently released three reports highlighting the extent to which graft has paralysed State owned enterprises. In that report, mai Chiri says that $500 million cannot be traced. Senior Government officials have also been caught with their fingers in the till and I will not talk about that because that is public information.
Next slide, I see my time is almost up.
THE HON. SPEAKER: It is up.
HON. MARIDADI: State enterprises – Mr. Speaker, we have more than 100 State enterprises in eight categories and only 47 presented their financial accounts to the Auditor-General. Less than ten got a clean bill of health that they are able to operate as the rest of them had going concern status by the Auditor-General…
THE HON. SPEAKER: Can you wind up, time?
HON. MARIDADI: Yes, I will talk about Air Zimbabwe very quickly. That is Air Zimbabwe, it has a debt of $300 million and it was given $200 million in 2010. It has retrenched 400 workers who they continue to rehire.
The next slide, $250 million of Air Zimbabwe’s debt was put into ZAMCO so that their balance sheet would be clean but today Air Zimbabwe is saddled with loss of $300 million. Let us go to the next slide that is an Air Zimbabwe aero plane but my prediction Mr. Speaker, the next slide shows what Air Zimbabwe is going to be like in 2020 – that is my prediction.
Let us go to the next slide, Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA),
Continued next page
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