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When the supplementary budget was presented by Minister of Finance and Economic Development Mthuli Ncube, it was basically to cope with the higher than expected monthly rates of inflation between April and July.
While the lower rates pertaining at the end of last year, and to an extent at the start of this year, had been factored into the calculations, the sudden spike around the second quarter, with the flanking months included, meant that in nominal terms more money was required, financed basically by the same inflation increasing tax receipts so the Minister was able to keep the inflows and outflows matching.
For the total and for most Government units this simply meant a doubling in what they needed to spend when this was expressed in local currency. But at the same time the opportunity was taken to make some adjustments and allocate more new money, rather than just coping with higher inflation rates.
One was to increase the percentage of the budget spent on staff compensation. This went from around 37 percent of the total to 43 percent of the new total, allowing the Minister more leeway when he implemented salary and allowance rises, as well as having more cash for other benefits.
One area where there was a significant jump was in social security. To the original $19 billion was added another $34 billion, so here again there was new money, not just an adjustment for unexpected levels of inflation.
Some spending on social welfare does not come from the Government. Churches, private charity, the more useful NGOs and development partners chip in with a lot of support in cash and kind, but Zimbabwe itself needs to show the way.
For a start it is a national responsibility to help those in severe need who cannot help themselves, and national responsibilities must be led by the Government. While all additional help is always welcome, spreading the load and involving a lot more people and organisations, they are not legally bound to chip in.
The second reason is that a lot of those willing to help like to see Zimbabwe pulling its weight as well and not just sitting back. We all see this in our private lives. We are far more likely to help, say, an intellectually challenged man wanting to help with garden work than what looks like an otherwise fit alcoholic. One attracts our support, the other not.
We saw a lot of this during the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic, something outside the social welfare budget. Once those looking to help those who help themselves saw the sort of effort Zimbabwe was making they were happy to chip in and smooth roads.
To take just one example. China gave Zimbabwe significant support in vaccines and other supplies once it saw that Zimbabwe was organising medical teams, mobilising its own resources and generally upgrading the whole health sector.
Some of that support was foreign aid, some of it was allowing Zimbabwe to buy vaccines and supplies, which at that time were in short supply, at the rational prices, simply because we could show we could use these.
The basic premise behind the social welfare budget is the Government policy that no one should be left behind. Easily the largest fraction of Government support goes on helping those able to help themselves. We are beating back rural poverty, for example, with the inputs schemes, allowing those who want to move forward to do so by giving them the resources.
This is not cheap, but it costs significantly less and has far more positive benefits individually and nationally than handing out food aid. But there will always be some who need the extra support and they cannot be left behind.
This year Pfumvudza is going a bit further. Besides the extra families joining, and we are coming close to 100 percent rural coverage, we are seeing the start of mechanisation with the first effort being made to help dig the holes, the physically most draining part of the farm work, for those living with physical disabilities and the elderly.
This is not on the social welfare budget, but it has the same effect of not leaving people behind.
One of the largest programmes in the budget is BEAM, the support given to schoolchildren whose parents or guardians cannot afford the school fees and uniforms.
Here the decision is made that first the children should not suffer, and secondly it makes more sense to ensure we have no children left behind than sorting out a pool of uneducated adults in a few years.
So for both reasons we spend some tax money on getting the fees paid. There are regulations that prevent a public school from barring a pupil whose parents will not pay, but the schools need every cent of their fees, plus whatever other support they can drum up with equipment and the like from the Government and donors, so BEAM not only gets the children into school, but also ensures the school has the needed income.
Other parts of the budget need to be spent on other people. There are some who need support; there are those who have become addicted to drugs who need treatment and counselling.
But there are also those who can work, who can join productive programmes, and who do not. This is always the trickiest part of a social worker’s job.
In one sense you cannot abandon the person, and you certainly cannot let their children or elderly dependants suffer, but often you need to have a large component of counselling than cash, but counselling still needs people and people need pay.
The Second Republic has been building systems that pinpoint those who need help, and concentrate the modest sums we can afford on those. This is one of the reasons Minister Ncube hates subsidies.
A mealie-meal subsidy, for example, helps the rich person in Borrowdale as much as the needy person, and in any case often just funds the black market.
But the needy still need help, and if you have budgeted correctly then you can send them some money to buy their food, while not sending money to the rich or the black market operators.
Social payments therefore make much better sense than subsidies, no matter how much the middle income and rich disagree.
One of our goals now should be refining the support. While there are children who need 100 percent BEAM support there are possibly others who need just 50 percent.
We can differentiate as we get better and so make the budget go further while still not leaving anyone behind, or spending the difference on rooms full of bureaucrats.
As the country progresses we will be able to identify the casualties more easily, and those needing support more easily. So we will need to be more sophisticated in how we budget and spend on social welfare, including more national insurance type schemes. But we need to continually take these aspects seriously and the revised budget does this.
Online Reporter