National budget a load of bull?

Why do we dread budget time? Is it because there is little good news new, if any, that comes out of such an exercise, particularly when it comes to relief in times of economic hardship.

The national budget will be announced with all the pomp and ceremony that normally goes with such occasions as if there is anything to celebrate. Forgive me for being sarcastic but with all the experience that I have garnered listening to statement after statement all these years, I just have to be understandably blasé.

I can’t help but feel pity for the Minister of Finance, Honourable Tendai Biti, who in his trademark bombastic manner tries to draw excitement out an occasion that can be at best, be compared to a gathering of sheep patiently waiting for slaughter. He has the onerous task of having to break the hearts of nearly 14 million people, more if you include those in the diaspora.

Apart from the reality of having very little cash to play around with, Minister Biti presents a statement whose principal challenge is to whether the ordinary man will be able to skim through all that verbiage and understand the facts. There is just too much jargon in the national budget statement,

We have already made our voices heard about an unreadable constitution that was designed to confuse us. The only things to remember about that forgettable document are the amendments, and for good reason too! They have done more to violate our fundamental freedoms than to give me peace of mind.

We deserve a user friendly budget, honourable minister, one that I can easily enlighten our four year old Junior without being bombarded with too many ‘whys.’ One which we can dot all the i’s and cross the t’s. There is nothing more frustration as trying to explain something so important in a medium one can hardly understand, that is, gibberish.

Perhaps it’s all intentional. Is it a case of what American comic and actor W.C. Fields once said; “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull?”

Just like law, as an example. Because of all the legal rigmarole, one is forced to pay an arm and a leg in legal fees for a privileged few to unravel it for you. Information should not be the preserve of a few, particularly when it comes to the budget which affects the lives of so many.

One of the most puzzling events that precede the budget is an event called a Pre-Budget Consultation. It is a gathering of all the economic fundis that can be smoked out of their foxholes, the beleaguered Minister of Finance, parliamentarians and a few hangers-on, to debate, dissect, and extrapolate elements that will make up the budget document.

Correct me if I am wrong, judging by the time these costly road shows are held, I get bet you my bottom dollar that the budget would long been prepared. With my limited English I can only assume that the term “Pre-Budget” means “before the budget.”

Any right thinking government would not expect a budget, containing vital info on how a country can earn and spend its financial resources, to be prepared in a couple of weeks! We might as well conclude that bearing this glaring fact in mind that the national budget for the year 2012 long left the drawing board and is actually at the printers as we speak.

So why national budget consultations to input in a document whose ink have is already dry? Aren’t we putting the proverbial cart before the horse? By attending these charades are we not lending credence to some form of mass deception? Not forgetting the money spent setting them up and sending the finance ministry juggernaut across the country?

And if they are dubbed ‘public’ why hold them at luxury hotels whose capacity and indeed distance put off the very people they are supposed to reach? I am yet to see pre-budget consultations held at the Luveve Beit Hall in Bulawayo or Sakubva in Mutare? Why not hold them at Stoddard Hall or Dulibadzimu for that matter?

Why it is that so few MPs attend such consultations? Are they showing contempt for an exercise that is so short on substance and long on hollow talk? Talking about the one this fly on the wall managed to sneak into, some of the MPs who attended showed this flawed aspect of the whole process by giving suggestions which for all intents and purposes should have made it into the final document.

Are they telling us that they were AWOL during debates in the House, which would not be surprising at all, or that if they were there, they could have been taking a nap which has been parliamentary privilege since time immemorial?

The issues that were raised at the consultations, had some of our decision makers bothered to attended, are nothing new. Government overspending, a warped sense of priorities and the thorny issue of accountability dominated the discussions. No matter how hard they tried, it was plain for all to see that the fiscus was leaking like a sieve particularly when it came to the world’s worst kept secret, revenue from the Marange diamond fields.

If we could substitute some big guns’ pockets for the treasury, I am sure that we would not be wailing about sanctions or any other lame excuse for mismanagement and plain pilfering. The question that remained lingering in the air like a bad smell was, do we have the courage to bite the bullet will we continue to go through the motions?

Such ill-advised decisions such as statutory instruments introducing duty restrictions on food stuffs would have been avoided if genuine consultation had taken place. By offering civil servants a pittance with one hand, then taking away that token increment through duty fuelled price increases is cruel.

Our hope is that the national budget will recognise the fact that the country’s economy is far from having recovered. And that people deserve some form of relief rather than to be thrown to the wolf pack that is Zimbabwe’s nascent entrepreneurs. It should tame this disrespect for hard currencies where businesses still believe in 100% profit.

The pertinent question members of the public should be asking is whether the national budget is indeed an instrument in deception. Especially if a couple of months down the line, we seem to disregard the document and elect to operate like a village bottle store?

It is so obvious that we are able to salvage ourselves from the mess are in if we are honest with ourselves and live within our means. If our gallivanting leaders would stop siphoning the little that collects in the treasury or elect to drive modest vehicles rather than gargantuan fuel guzzling behemoths, then we would be indeed going somewhere.

The challenge for those in leadership is to ensure that the targets set in the national budget and the recommendations therein will lead us to a semblance of economic recovery. Our collective hope is that the 2012 national budget is not just another game of smoke and mirrors.