Bulawayo South Movement for Democratic Change legislator Eddie Cross said yesterday that Zimbabwe, which is currently operating on an annual budget of $4 billion, has lost more than $60 billion through corruption since independence but this does not include the amount lost from the Marange diamonds.
In addition, the country lost a further $17 billion from the Marange diamonds, he added, a figure that is some $2 billion more than President Robert Mugabe suggested.
Cross said, however, that at least US$1.4 billion of that loss to corruption could be recovered by Parliament if it took effective action.
“We are a nation which is struggling to pay its staff; we are a nation which is struggling to buy medicines for our hospitals; we are a nation which cannot put books on the tables in our schools; we are a nation which cannot finance BEAM and yet there are these very considerable sums of money which are being consumed by corrupt elements in our society in front of us,” he told Parliament in his contribution to Mugabe’s speech on the opening of the current session of Parliament.
“We know how it is being done, we know who is doing it and we know how much is involved. I am going to ask the Budget and Finance Committee to make a tough stance at the next weeks Budget Seminar in Bulawayo and to demand for example, that we tackle these issues now with vigor, as a country and as a Parliament.”
Below is his contribution in full:
HON. CROSS: Thank you Madam Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity this afternoon. I welcome the opportunity to debate the President’s speech to the opening of this Session of Parliament as an opportunity to raise a couple of issues of what I regard as national importance. I want to deal this afternoon with two issues specifically. The first is the issue of corruption in the State and the second is the rule of law.
Madam Speaker, a respectable group of economists have calculated that the total cost of corruption in Zimbabwe since we gained our independence, has been in excess of US$60 billion. That is equivalent to US$4 500 for every living Zimbabwean, man woman and child. It is equivalent to US$1.7 billion a year in corruption. Now, there are many features to this corrupt activity and I will not bother going back historically in any kind of depth, but I do want to emphasise this afternoon that this excludes specifically the cost of Marange.
If we examine the Marange issue, Marange was discovered around the year 2000 and it was abandoned by De Beers who found the discovery in 2006 – [HON. MEMBERS: Inaudible interjections.] –
Continued next page
(244 VIEWS)
One Comment