By Vivid Gwede.
On May 1, 2025, as Zimbabwe’s public sector workers commemorated Workers’ Day and reflected on their working conditions, the Business Times reported that the Zimbabwean government’s budget had realised surplus in the first quarter.
The development showed “fiscal discipline and economic responsibility”, the paper said, while the finance minister Prof. Mthuli Ncube claimed after a post-Cabinet briefing, “…again, we were able to live within our means.”
For the government, the USD 40 million surplus in the first quarter of 2025 is important because of limited access to international credit markets partly owing to Zimbabwe’s debt standing at 78% of GDP according to the World Bank.
In the first quarter of 2025, the government raised USD 1.57 bn and spent USD 1.53 bn.
Delivering the 2025 Budget Statement in November 2024, the Treasury boss had projected a budget deficit of ZiG 6.1 bn or 0.4% of GDP.
The surplus may mean the government is on track to reduce this revenue shortfall and live within its means, or so it appears.
The Treasury said the budget surplus was because the government exceeded both its tax and non-tax revenue targets based on its strategy and target of broadening the tax base and enhancing compliance.
But under the surface lies a story of collapsing service delivery, including public health, over-taxation of ordinary people, poor working conditions for government workers, and public waste through luxury spending and corruption.
This means despite the celebrations the government should be doing better in public finance management.
ZITAP argues the public balance sheet must not only look right on paper, but must feel right to the citizens, meaning the burden of Zimbabwe’s economic stabilisation must be shared equally.
Since accepting to head Zimbabwe’s Treasury in September 2018, the finance minister Prof. Mthuli Ncube in his economic stabilisation plan has been emphasising fiscal and monetary discipline under the Transitional Stabilisation Program (STP) and the National Development Strategy (NDS 1).
Part of the plan has been targeting to reduce budget deficits by cutting expenditure and making Zimbabweans tighten their belts, including curtailing the civil service salaries and spending on social sectors such as health and education.
But Zimbabwe’s austerity is not widely shared with government and political elites living in luxury while Zimbabweans face increasing taxes.
In the 2025 Budget statement, Minister Ncube promised to reduce the tax budget on ordinary people, including raising the ZiG tax-free threshold to ZiG 2,800 per month.
What the government has promised and given with one hand has taken away by another through a barrage of taxes nearly every month.
As the government celebrates a surplus claiming Zimbabweans are living within their means, the question is who is carrying the burden of Zimbabwe’s macro-economic stabilisation.
The high taxes combined with poor public services remove doubt that the burden has been shifted to ordinary people, and this must change.
While populism will not cut it, the government must play it fair.