Zimbabwe has taken steps towards ending its economic isolation in its first budget since the end of Robert Mugabe’s 37-year authoritarian rule.<\/p>\n
Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa announced a package of measures aimed at wooing international investors, including new curbs on laws that require firms to be 51% locally owned.<\/p>\n
He said privatisation of some state firms was being considered.<\/p>\n
He unveiled spending cuts including the closure of some diplomatic missions.<\/p>\n
Mr Chinamasa also said all civil servants over the age of 65 would have to retire as the government aims for a 2018 budget deficit of below 4% of GDP.<\/p>\n
At present, more than 90% of government expenditure goes to pay civil servants’ salaries.<\/p>\n
Since taking office last week, new President Emmerson Mnangagwa has pledged to crack down on corruption.<\/p>\n
He has also offered a three-month amnesty for individuals and companies to surrender public funds illegally stashed abroad.<\/p>\n
The Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act (IEEA), which aimed to place 51% of companies into the hands of black Zimbabweans, was brought in by Mr Mugabe in 2009.<\/p>\n
But in Thursday’s budget announcement, Mr Chinamasa said the law would apply only to the platinum and diamond sectors from now on.<\/p>\n
At the same time, export taxes on processed platinum would be deferred until 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Zimbabwe has taken steps towards ending its economic isolation in its first budget since the end of Robert Mugabe’s 37-year authoritarian rule. Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa announced a package of measures aimed at wooing international investors, including new curbs on laws that require firms to be 51% locally owned. He said privatisation of some state firms was being considered. He… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1224"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1229,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1224\/revisions\/1229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}