Former Finance Minister Tendai Biti has strongly criticized Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube’s 2024 Budget Statement, labelling it as a “shallow, hollow, narcissistic, dishonest anti-people ritual.”

Biti’s scathing critique comes after Ncube introduced the price range amidst a troublesome and difficult yr for Zimbabweans, marked by excessive inflation, excessive taxes, energy shortages, and poverty exacerbated by the present drought.

Biti highlighted seven key points that amplify the price range’s shortcomings.

Firstly, he criticized the failure to calibrate the price range in US {dollars}, citing the native foreign money’s volatility and inflation pressures. He additionally questioned the micro-economic framework and projections, deeming them “unsound and blatantly dishonest.”

“In a volatile high inflation environment, expressing the budget in a local currency ravaged by serious inflation pressures is clearly a faux pas,” Biti said.

“Zimbabwe has gone by way of six bouts of foreign money failures and any price range expressed in an area foreign money is a facade. A risky ZiG additionally creates accounting chaos for companies.

“Ultimately, a ZiG based budget is simply a means to hide and mislead the true depth of economic mismanagement.”

The price range’s projection of a 6% progress in 2025 has additionally been met with scepticism, with Biti arguing that it’s primarily based on unrealistic assumptions, together with first rate rainfall, low inflation, and a secure foreign money.

He additionally criticized the proposed income measures, which embody taxes on betting earnings, quick meals, and casual merchants, labelling them as “narcissistic and lacking empathy.”

“The regime’s proposed revenue measures are narcissistic and lack empathy. Imposing taxes on betting income, on pizza and chicken inn is ridiculous. Targeting informal traders in spare parts dealers, groceries, hardware, lodgers, fabric merchandisers, and boutiques for taxation is cruel and ridiculous. The regime suffers from the warped view that it can extract money from stone. The pathological obsession with taxation is sickening,” the previous Harare East legislator mentioned.

Biti, additional expressed concern over the price range’s failure to handle the nation’s structural power disaster and the necessity for foreign money reform. He argued that the ZiG has failed and that the epicentre of the nation’s disaster is alternate price mismanagement.

In addition to Biti’s criticisms, Ncube’s price range has launched a number of new taxes and royalties, together with a ten% withholding tax on gross winnings of sports activities betting punters, a quick meals tax, and taxes on the rising sector.

These measures have been met with widespread criticism, with many arguing that they are going to additional burden already struggling Zimbabweans.

Iinvestigative journalist Hopewell Chin’ono mentioned: “The Zimbabwean authorities is so broke that it has launched an additional tax on pizza, burgers, sizzling canine, French fries, Tacos, Chicken, and Doughnuts, which can be paid by the customer.

“The consequences of corrupt rule, combined with an incompetent government, are undeniable!”

In an effort to melt the blow, Ncube provided token aid on tax-free earnings thresholds, Capital Gains Tax on Marketable Securities, and VAT deferment on the power sector.