by Simangaliso Ncube
The new Zimbabwean Minister of Finance, Ariston Chambati presented his maiden national budget for the 1995/96 fiscal year against the adverse impact of the drought, slow economic growth and a huge deficit carried over from the previous financial year.
Given such a background, Charnbati allowed marginal increases over last year’s allocations for individual ministries. He encouraged all ministries to “… reprioritize and rationalize their activities in order to direct their limited resources in a more economic, efficient, productive and effective manner.”
The Z$22.574 bill ion (US$2.821 billion) budget, for both recurrent and capital expenditure was presented to the Parliament of Zimbabwe at the end of July.
Accounting for the greater part of the recurrent budget are the Education, Defence, Finance, Health and
Child Welfare. Horne Affairs and Higher Education ministries. Together, they were allocated 74.6 percent of the total votes. Of this total, the two ministries of Education were allocated Z$4.476 billion •• a 32.1 percent of total recurrent expenditure-· showing government’s commitment to its education programmes.
While in nominal terms, the Defence ministry’s vote of Z$2.025 billion was the second largest, this was
a 4.4 percent decline from last year’s allocation. The Ministry of Home Affairs vote includes the ZSSO million lo be used for the Presidential Elections in 1996.
Chambali says that the government can no longer afford the luxury of overspending. To ensure that ministries adhere to their allocations, the Treasury will introduce a Stop Payment facility at the Central
Payments Office.
Turning to the private sector, the Minister announced a number of protectionist measures. For the local industry, these have been most welcome with some industrialists arguing that it was high time that the private sector got some protection, through high tariffs, and incentives necessary for its growth.
In his presentation, the Minister noted that, “The liberalization of trade has opened up a lot of industries to competition from imported products which are cheaper than locally finished products.”
To this end, he increased duty on imported textiles, particularly second-hand clothing. The duty on motor vehicles which ranged between 55 and 75 percent depending on type of vehicles was increased by 10 percent to the 65-85 percent range. Duty on batteries was also raised by 10 percent to protect local manufacturers.
The Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce (ZNCC) President, Danny Meyer, says that by imposing high tariffs on imported vehicles, “Government had missed an opportunity to boost the growth rate of employment in the retail motor vehicle trade – where the recent expansion had led to a wide range of new formal and informal sector jobs.”
For the women of southern Africa, this need for greater investment in their education and health is clearly evident. Despite encouraging trends in the health and education of women in the region, a lot remains to be done particularly when one considers the implications of women’s education to child and maternal mortality rates, use of family planning and incidence of HIV/AIDS.
Director of Zimbabwe’s Legal Resources Foundation, Dumisani Mashingaidze stated at a seminar to mark the launch of a report on Women’s Health in Zimbabwe – A Path to Development, which will be presented to the WCW, that, “An unhealthy population cannot offer anything towards economic growth and development. If the state wants to improve its nation’s health it should educate women”. This statement is easily applicable to any of the countries of the southern African region or indeed the world.
Further exacerbating the situation of women in southern Africa is the spiral of poverty and environmental degradation in which many rural households are trapped. Land inequality has resulted in overcrowding in severely degraded communal areas, notably affecting female-headed households most. This situation has been further compounded by severe drought which has plagued the region for four years. Oxfam UK, the British based charity points out in its report on poverty that a country cannot expect economic growth to ring improvement in human welfare when vast numbers of people lack the right to use land and other productive resources.
The problems of overcoming feminization of poverty may appear virtually insurmountable given the many interlinkages with other sectors but, at the very least it is an item at the top of the agenda. In addition, the Draft Platform for Action proposes some actions to enable women to overcome poverty.
These are:
+ promoting of women’s economic self-reliance and increasing their access to quality education and health services with a target for reducing populations living in extreme poverty by 50 percent by the year 2000;
+ developing gender sensitive national and international policies
+ providing poor women with economic opportunities
+ providing rural women with equal access to productive resources, including legal access to land,provision of credit and extension services; and, finally
+ addressing the needs of migrant and displaced women.
Many remain cynical as to whether the WCW can bring about enough commitment from the world’s governments to actually improve the situation of women. But, given the amount of interest that has been raised, by not only the WCW but also the World Social Summit and the Population Conference, there is now greater realization that women’s problems are problems of society as a whole. “I think we are moving towards a change — a dramatic change … ” says Mongella. (SARDC)
