Maravi

(NEWZIMBABWE) Biti worst finance minister ever: Moyo

Biti worst finance minister ever: Moyo
by Prof Jonathan Moyo
18/07/2010 00:00:00

Finance Minister Tendai Biti, who is staring at staggering political irrelevance as the embattled secretary-general of Morgan Tsvangirai’s now irretrievably divided MDC faction, squandered yet another budget statement opportunity to justify his ministerial portfolio when he presented a lacklustre 2010 mid-term fiscal policy review in Parliament last Wednesday which was laden with telling contradictions underpinned by his mischievous political intent.

It should be remembered that Biti’s appointment as finance minister following the formation of the coalition Government was controversial not least because there was nothing obvious about his qualification in finance or economics besides his political claim to seniority in the MDC-T.

It is a public secret that Biti had wanted to be either one of what would have been three deputy prime ministers or to be the sole minister of home affairs.

When it became clear that neither position was available he settled for the position of minister of finance not because he had any professional competence in the area but merely because he perceived that ministry as the most senior in the hierarchy of ministries given its cross-cutting consequences on the allocation of financial resources.

But some 17 months since his appointment as finance minister, Biti’s ministerial performance has raised more eyebrows than solved any of the myriad economic challenges facing the country.

Notwithstanding his obvious inexperience and lack of professional grounding in the field Biti has surprisingly and unwisely adopted a non-consultative “I know it all” attitude which has alienated key economic players including pivotal bureaucrats in his ministry, not to mention other stakeholders in and outside the coalition Government.

What has further compounded Biti’s self-made quandary is that he has been playing bad politics of ambition in Tsvangirai’s increasingly divided MDC whose not-so-clever kitchen cabinet has taken the long knives out as it bays for his political blood.

The resultant infighting has generated untold ethnic tension in the MDC-T, most of it revolving around what now appears to be Biti’s ill-fated tenure as the party’s secretary-general. Minister Biti, who is said to routinely refer to Tsvangirai with unflattering code names, has not made things any easier for himself by being politically reckless in general and being too self-centred in particular.

The evidence of Biti allowing his misguided ego to get the better of him was all too apparent in his mid-term fiscal policy review last Wednesday. But even more evident were his rather revealing policy contradictions and mischievous political intentions which clearly did not win him friends at a time he needs them the most.

As a sample in support of the foregoing, the following revelations were notable from Minister Biti’s squandered mid-term fiscal policy review statement, namely that:

- As recently charged by Minister Eliphas Mukonoweshuro, Biti does after all see himself as a super minister who abuses his budget policy statements to seek to unilaterally make policies for other ministries outside the Cabinet process with the latest example being his attempt to lead the crafting of a so-called Diamond Mining Act he scandalously proposed in Parliament last Wednesday.

Biti’s mischievous proposal had the effect of not only seeking to usurp the powers and functions of the Minister of Mines and Mining Development, Obert Mpofu, but also seeking to undermine the legislative agenda of the Third Session of the Seventh Parliament which President Robert Mugabe had laid before the legislature only a day before Biti's statement.

- After some 17 months as finance minister, and having been the leader of the MDC-T negotiating team in the GPA talks, it is as shocking as it is disappointing that Biti is still in absolute denial about the existence and impact of the illegal and evil economic sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe by some Western countries seeking regime change in Zimbabwe. His mid-term fiscal policy review statement does not anywhere throughout its 681 paragraphs covering 202 pages mention even just once the words “economic sanctions”.

This alone disqualifies him as minister of finance and makes him wholly unworthy of the very important national position. Biti is a huge disservice to this nation and he must go and the sooner the better for Zimbabwe.

- Biti’s mid-term fiscal policy review exposed Prime Minister Tsvangirai’s lie that the recent reshuffle and sacking of some MDC-T ministers was done on performance grounds when the writing on the wall clearly indicates that it was all about the politics of power. A careful reading of Biti’s statement in Parliament last Wednesday clearly shows that the Minister of Health and Child Welfare, Henry Madzorera, should also have gotten the chop if the Cabinet reshuffle and sackings were occasioned by poor performance. Indeed, and purely on performance grounds, Biti himself should not have survived the same chop.

- Contrary to their posturing with lofty claims that they will support only MDC-led ministries in the coalition Government, Minister Biti’s mid-term policy review statement showed that the lofty donor talk is in fact empty and that loquacious anti-Zimbabwe Western donors are actually failing to put their money where their loud mouths are simply because their countries are broke and cannot continue with their regime-change budgets in the same old way of throwing money all over the place and at every Tom, Dick and Jane opposed to Zimbabwe.

- The pro-poor rhetoric in Minister Biti’s mid-term fiscal policy review statement is just that: worthless rhetoric.

There is something to be gained by examining further each of these five considerations that are of course not exhaustive of the many terrible things that Minster Biti said in Parliament last Wednesday but which are nevertheless very instructive of his quintessentially mischievous political intent that must be resisted without fear or favour by all nationalist and patriotic Zimbabweans.

To start with, take his self-declared pro-poor rhetoric. On Page 107 of his statement, paragraph 302, Minister Biti declares that “ . . . a pro-poor strategy and inclusive growth strategy will be achieved and enhanced by ensuring adequate support to agriculture being the source of livelihood for the majority of the poor, living in rural areas”.

Yet nowhere in his statement does he demonstrate that he in fact understands the plight of the poor or the needs of agriculture.

Last Wednesday’s mid-term fiscal policy review statement alludes to the challenges of the liquidity crunch, which is a fundamental current economic challenge, but does so only in structural terms without contending with what this means for the ordinary poor person in the rural and even urban areas.

The fact of the matter is that the United States dollar and the South African rand are very hard to come by for ordinary people who have been forced into barter trade in which they are losing their lifetime-earned assets without any respite.

How can Biti expect to be taken seriously as Minister of Finance when he indulges in the rhetoric of pro-poor economics as if he does not know that he is presiding over a liquidity crunch whose essence has been to strip the poor in this country of their remaining assets after their livelihood was devastated in the days of hyper-inflation? Our country desperately needs a pro-poor economic strategy to protect the assets of our vulnerable compatriots in the rural and high-density urban areas.

It is very disappointing that while Minister Biti’s mid-term fiscal policy review statement acknowledges that the livelihood of the poor depends on agriculture, it does not offer any tangible support besides Machiavellian words that are oozing with political mischief about 99-year land leases and pie-in-the-sky type of donor promises to ostensibly support communal farmers who are not beneficiaries of the historic land reform programme.

In the same vein, it is shocking that Minister Biti — whose fiscal policy review statement noted that by the end of the planting season on May 31 2010 — only 10 000 hectares had been put under wheat against the targeted 30 000 hectares did not say or offer any doable thing about the funding of the forthcoming summer cropping season whose planning and funding must necessarily be done and completed in July for it to be meaningful in support of the poor in our country. This inaction proves the poverty of Biti’s pro-poor rhetoric.

Then there is the second point which is related to Biti’s false pro-poor rhetoric and it has to do with the lofty claims by some Western donors that they will support only MDC-led ministries in the coalition Government under the “Vote of Credit” which targeted US$810 million in the 2010 Budget.

But by the end of last month only a paltry US$210 million had been made available in support of some programmes budgeted for health, education and rural development. What this clearly shows is that the lofty donor talk is in fact empty and that the noisy anti-Zimbabwe Western donors are basically failing to financially support their political rhetoric about their agenda for so-called political reforms in Zimbabwe simply because their coffers are dry due to the ongoing economic crises in their countries.

This is turning Biti’s Vote of Credit in his 2010 Budget into a laughing stock and is undermining his presumed relevance, let alone that of his MDC-T party which is supposed to be the brainchild and favourite of the defaulting donors.

In this regard, Minister Biti’s last Wednesday mid-term fiscal policy review statement was unintentionally very useful insofar as it helped expose the hypocrisy of Western donors who are failing to put their money where their mouths are in Zimbabwe. Also exposed in this connection is the political stupidity and treachery of those among us who routinely swallow the false propaganda of Western donors.

But something else rather important and interesting was exposed by Biti’s mid-term fiscal policy review statement and that is Prime Minister Tsvangirai’s falsehood that his recent reshuffle and sacking of some of his MDC-T ministers was done purely and only for reasons of poor performance.

That claim would have led the public to believe that, for example, the Minister of Health and Child Welfare, Henry Madzorera, is performing well which would explain why he did not get the chop or reshuffle.

Yet paragraph 243 on Page 91 of Minister Biti’s mid-term fiscal policy review statement makes revealing reading where he says: “In the past, implementing agencies have cited lack of resources as an impediment to project implementation. We have since discovered that this is not the case as demonstrated by the lack of implementation on projects where disbursed resources remain unutilised.”

On Page 92 under paragraph 246 of his statement Minister Biti makes a startling revelation that the very critical Ministry of Health and Child Welfare was availed R100 million for revitalisation of hospitals in the country and the ministry has utilised only R20 million of this money “resulting in slow progress on the ground”.

The public knows that the fallen MDC-T ministers who were reshuffled or sacked for poor performance, such as Elias Mudzuri, the former Minister of Energy and Power Development, claimed that they were not give enough resources to do their jobs properly. What then is the explanation for the non-performance of the Minister of Health and Child Welfare who is failing to utilise resources that have been availed to his ministry to revitalise hospitals in the country?

Why has only R20 million been used out of R100 million? If this is not poor performance deserving of the boot, then what is? With this example provided by Minister Biti, do Prime Minister Tsvangirai and his cronies still expect us to believe their lie that the MDC-T cabinet reshuffle and sackings were really about performance and not about the politics of the kitchen cabinet and the whims and caprices of its patronage?

But the political dishonesty on display is not restricted to the hypocrisy of Western donors who pontificate at large about political conditions for funding when they are in fact broke or to Prime Minister Tsvangirai who pretends to be making a performance-based cabinet reshuffle when he is recklessly trying to put out fires of rebellion in his ranks. Minister Biti has his own political dishonesty to contend with.

It is shocking in the extreme that after some 17 months as finance minister, and after heading the MDC-T negotiating team in the GPA talks, Biti is still in total denial about the existence and consequences of the illegal and evil economic sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe by the very same regime-change-seeking Western countries that are failing to meet their commitments to provide US$810 million as the Vote of Credit out of which they have thus far released only US$207 million.

Even more telling on the sanctions score is the fact that while Minister Biti admits on Page 110 under paragraph 312 of his fiscal policy review statement that the key question affecting the poor performance of our industry, besides the high cost of utilities, is the absence of lines of credit and the general high cost of money with only US$195,92 million having been disbursed out of a target of US$605 million, he pretends not to know that this is due to the illegal economic sanctions.

Hence he does not in any way address the economic sanctions yet this is the single most important issue of the GPA and the coalition Government.

Notably, according to Minister Biti’s fiscal policy review, the major external financier remains Afreximbank, which was brought into the economy by Dr Gideon Gono as Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe and whose facilities for the first half of 2010 totalled US$268,5 million. This means that there is no single banking institution or investor in the country that has come on board over the last 17 months as a specific or direct initiative of Minister Biti!

As such, if Zimbabweans were to ask him what he has done for them lately as Minister of Finance since February 13 2009, the honest and true answer would be: nothing. Yes, nothing. Except his now legendary bombastic rhetoric punctuated by his destruction of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe which he pursued under his mindless mantra that “Gono must go” and whose real casualty has been the national economy.

By Minister Biti’s own admission, on Page 88 of his fiscal policy review statement under paragraph 230, the lines of credit arranged under the Reserve Bank that were received in 2009 were US$656 million and so far in 2010 under Biti the lines of credit have declined to a paltry US$192 million!

In a damaging conclusion about what in effect is his deplorable performance as finance minister Biti tellingly says on Page 105 of his Wednesday statement under paragraph 294 that: “In the aftermath of a decade-long economic crisis and the subsequent introduction of a multiple currency system supported by the cash budgeting principle, the country is principally relying on one instrument — ‘fiscal policy’ — in the management of the economy.

“This is unlike most other economies, managed through complementing monetary and fiscal policies and supported by external inflows including donor support, among others.”

Biti should not play games and hope to treat Zimbabweans as fools. We all know what happened to monetary policy. He destroyed it in 2009 in his infantile personal fight against Gono and that is one out of the many other reasons why he just does not get it and does not deserve to be minister of finance at all. He is clearly the worst such minister in Zimbabwe’s history thus far.

Finally, as has now become his sickening custom in his three presented budget statements thus far, Minister Biti sought to abuse his mid-term fiscal policy review last Wednesday by making policies for other ministries in a manner that clearly justified Minister Eliphas Mukonoweshuro’s outburst earlier this year that Biti has a rather annoying propensity to behave as if he is a super minister.

On Pages 120 to 121 of his fiscal policy review statement Minister Biti not only proposes amendments to the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation (ZMDC) Act (cap 21:08) apparently to suit the political agenda of interests that are hostile to Zimbabwe’s mining rights but also claims that “there is broad consensus in Government that there should be a new Diamond Act that requires that all alluvial diamond mining to be conducted by and through the State”.

Sounds good at face value but if there's such a broad consensus, why have we not heard about it from the minister responsible for mines and mining development? More specifically, if there is such a law on the cards, how come

President Mugabe did not mention it in the legislative agenda that he presented to Parliament only a day before Biti's mid-term fiscal review which was presented to the same Parliament?

What state is Biti talking about? Is he not aware that the entire 129 000 hectares which has alluvial diamonds in Marange is under the control of the State through ZMDC, which is a wholly State entity? Is he not aware that no company can mine in Marange unless it does so with or through ZMDC and therefore the State?

As he proposes amendments to the ZMDC Act, why is it lost on Biti to call on the removal of illegal Western economic sanctions on ZMDC? Is Biti not aware that alluvial diamonds in Marange are finite with a lifespan that does not exceed eight years at best and that in the end diamond mining in that region must ultimately be of kimberlites that are underground and thus require extensive investment which the State cannot afford alone?

While he thinks about these and related questions, what is clear is that Minister Biti’s interests in Marange diamonds are diabolic and that his proposals for a new Diamond Act will not fool anybody about their anti-Zimbabwean origins and evil purpose.

If Biti really wants to do what he is proposing and if he believes that nobody really knows what he is up to, then he should be told once again to just go to hell and leave us alone, please. The Sunday Mail

Labels: NEOCOLONIALISM, NEOLIBERALISM, SANCTIONS, TENDAI BITI

posted by MrK @ 10:11 AM