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THE government will not conduct public consultations for the 2015 national budget this year due to limited resources but will use contributions from parliamentarians to craft the budget statement, an official said.
The chairperson of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Budget and Finance, David Chapfika, told Business Chronicle yesterday that the norm of conducting pre-budget hearings across provinces was not feasible this year because of lack of resources.
He said Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa would use the input from legislators and participants who attended last week’s three-day pre-budget meeting in Victoria Falls.
“We should have done the public pre-budget hearing before we met last week but we couldn’t because of resource constraints.
“It’s a tradition that each year we conduct public meetings but that process was not done as per expectation by members of the public,” said Chapfika.
“We now wait for the Minister of Finance to craft and present the budget to Parliament and thereafter the normal processes will follow. I don’t think there’ll be any public meetings.”
With only a month and a half before the end of the year, Chapfika would not be drawn to indicate when the budget would be presented saying that was the prerogative of minister Chinamasa.
He, however, applauded parliamentarians for attending and contributing during the budget deliberations, which he described as “fruitful, interactive and interesting”.
The parliamentarians have pushed for prioritised funding of agriculture, revival of industries through beneficiation, major infrastructure and energy development, SMEs financing, health and social services development as espoused in Zim-Asset.
During the meeting, there was concern over the underperformance of the 2014 $4 billion budget that was characterised by suppressed economic growth and low revenue inflows.
derick.khumalo