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The Second Session of this Parliament Opened Today

Ceremonial Opening of Parliament

President Mnangagwa opened the Second Session of the Ninth Parliament of Zimbabwe at a joint sitting of both Houses of Parliament in the National Assembly today.  At 12 noon, after the customary preliminaries outside Parliament, the President went into the National Assembly chamber to deliver his State of the Nation Address [SONA] [link].  The address included the Government’s Legislative Agenda for the coming session.

Afterwards both Houses met briefly and then adjourned for three weeks.  They will meet again on Tuesday 22nd October…

Bills in Parliament Last Week

Education Amendment Bill stalled by National Assembly’s rejection of Senate Amendment

On Wednesday 25th September the Senate received a non-adverse report from the Parliamentary Legal Committee [PLC] on its single amendment to the Bill.  [Clause 14(k) of the Bill provided for the “appointment of sexual and reproductive health personnel” in schools, and Senators had objected strongly to and deleted the words “sexual and”.]  The Senate then finalised the Bill and returned it to the National Assembly.  In brief proceedings the following day the National Assembly rejected the Senate’s amendment.  This disagreement between the two Houses stopped the Bill’s further progress for the time being. The Bill, therefore, joins the other uncompleted Bills on the list of Bills lapsing at the end of the First Session.  As pointed out in Bill Watch 49/2019 [link], a Bill that lapses at the end of one session can be restored to the Order Paper by vote of the House in which the Bill was last discussed, in which case proceedings can continue from the stage previously reached

No progress on other Bills

No progress was made on the other Bills before the National Assembly: Zimbabwe Investment and Development Agency Bill, Money Laundering and Proceeds of Crime Amendment Bill and Coroner’s Office Bill, and the three Bills still under consideration by the PLC: Marriages Bill, Freedom of Information Bill and Zimbabwe Media Commission Bill.  All these Bills will also need to be restored to the Order Paper in the Second Session.

Constituency Development Fund [CDF] Increased

It was announced in both Houses that following the Supplementary Budget Review the CDF allocation had been revised upwards from $80 000 to $175 238.  Members were advised to submit projects for funding amounting to the revised figure.

Other Business in the National Assembly Last Week

Debates concluded and motions approved

Condolence motions  The National Assembly concluded debates on and adopted condolence motions following the deaths of the late MPs Hon Vimbai Tsvangirai, Hon Obedingwa Mguni and Hon Kaston Gumbwanda.  [Note: All three vacant seats have since been filled by by-elections in the constituencies concerned.]

Motion of Thanks for the President’s Speech opening the First Session  This debate was concluded and the motion approved on Wednesday 25th September.  In his response to the debate on behalf of Government the Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs claimed progress on many of the issues raised during the debate.

Question Time

Question Time took place as usual on Wednesday.  The Minister of ICT and Courier Services assured MPs that his Ministry was pushing for abolition of customs duty on all ICT equipment and urged MPs to support the Ministry by lobbying the Minister of Finance and Economic Development.  The Deputy Minister of Primary and Secondary Education said the Ministry was prioritising the training of teachers to ensure that all little children are taught in their mother tongue, including Sotho, Kalanga, Tonga and Venda.  Other issues raised included water supply problems in Harare and the legality of subdividing agricultural land into residential plots; on the latter the Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs advised MPs to await the report of the Uchena Commission of Inquiry into Disposal of State Land around urban areas.  

Other Business in the Senate Last Week

Debates concluded and motions approved

The Senate adopted Senator Timveos’ motion on the perennial shortages of clean and potable water in towns and growth points.  The motion specifically calls on Government to urgently allocate foreign exchange to local authorities for the development of water infrastructure in towns and growth centres and for the purchase of water treatment chemicals.

Question Time

On Thursday Question Time went ahead as scheduled.  The Minister of Energy and Power Development dealt with several questions about ZESA and power supply problems.  The Minister of Lands, Agriculture, Water, Climate and Rural Resettlement was faced with several questions about issues at the Grain Marketing Board.

International Standards Organisation Certification Hand-Over Ceremony

&

The Launch of Parliament’s Institutional Strategic Plan

On Friday 27th September a ceremony was held in the courtyard at Parliament at which:

•  the Standards Association of Zimbabwe handed over Parliament’s ISO 9001-2015 Certification; and
•   Parliament’s Institutional Strategic Plan for 2018-2023 was launched.

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Post published in: Featured

Before I begin my address, I kindly request the August House to observe a minute of silence in honour of the late Founding Father of our country and Former President, His Excellency, Cde R. G. Mugabe who passed on, on the 6th of September 2019.

It’s not pleasant to begin the week on bad news, but Zimbabweans are getting accustomed to it.

For the past four or so months, new fuel prices are announced every Sunday evening. Sometimes the announcement comes as late as 11pm. Last week was no exception, as many Zimbabweans woke up on Monday to the news that they would be paying 11% more for fuel.

Zimbabweans have lost count of the number of times fuel has gone up this year. All they know is that they now pay roughly 775% more than they paid in January 2019. The year started with petrol at $1.31 (local bond notes) and diesel at $1.26.

Water runs dry

Zimbabwe is facing its worst drought in almost four decades, in addition to cyclone-induced floods and economic collapse, which have left Zimbabwe on the verge of its worst-ever famine, Bloomberg recently reported.

To add to the challenges faced by the southern African nation, a bailout was required to address water supply issues in the capital, Harare.

“Harare City Council has run out of key water treatment chemicals….and if no urgent bailout is given between today and Tuesday, management will be forced to shut down Morton Jaffray Water Treatment Plant,” the City of Harare tweeted last Monday. A million people were left without water when the plant was shut down.

The city council said it was “stretching the little available amounts to treat limited supplies of water”.

According to the municipality, it buys “foreign currency on the runaway interbank exchange market against a stagnant and inflexible budget”. Like water, local dollars to buy foreign currency had also “run dry”, it said.

Government recently released $37.4m (Zimbabwe dollars) plus an undisclosed amount of foreign currency towards interventions to improve water access and waste water treatment in Harare. Zimbabwe faced a severe cholera outbreak in 2018, and inadequate facilities to treat water increases the risk of another outbreak.

Spiralling data tariffs

As if this were not enough, the country’s biggest mobile network operator, Econet, was also a bearer of bad news last week, noting that it would be reviewing bundle prices for data and SMSes. Daily data bundles increased in a range of 20 – 38.5%, the third tariff increase this year.

“The argument is simple; all costs have gone up, primary currency has weakened but real tariffs have remained the same,” said a senior official with Econet, who requested anonymity as he is not allowed to speak to the press.

It previously hiked data tariffs twice in the space of a month.

Plummeting exchange rate

Despite the spiralling costs of daily living, Zimbabweans are not facing a corresponding increase in income. Despite government workers recently being offered a 76% pay hike, recent reports across Zimbabwe have indicated that in many important economic sectors, struggling employers are paying wages that fall below the total consumption poverty line (TCPL).

Most of Zimbabwe’s troubles are, however, coming from the plummeting exchange rate.

Officially, Zimbabwe’s local dollar has lost more than 80% of its value since February – but the black market rates show an even larger decline.

Earlier in the month, President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government froze bank accounts belonging to the country’s biggest fuel supplier, as well as the largest car dealership.

Speaking at a meeting with a group of supporters in New York, where he was attending the United Nations General Assembly, Mnangagwa said his government had acted on “smart people” hurting the currency.

“We have people who find ways to fight that and undermine (the currency), but yesterday we also became smarter than their being smart, so we took some action,” Mnangagwa said.

“We have now arrested the galloping rate, which had gone up to about 20, 23, 24. By the time we left it had come down to about 15 and it’s still coming down, because we had put up some measures,” Mnangagwa told party supporters.

This was of little comfort to importers as they still had to pay 40 cents more on the following Monday than they had on the Friday.

Losing hope

In another demonstration of how desperate things are for Zimbabweans, the country’s statistics agency, Zimstat, last week released data saying a family of five needed to earn $1 827 in local currency in order not to be deemed poor. This compares unfavourably to the salaries of government workers, where the lowest paid earn $1 023.

All Zimbabweans want is better livelihoods, to put food on the table, to have running water, to have electricity, and medical care. But all these things remain elusive. The hope that many had when President Mnangagwa assumed office is fading fast.

And unless he deals decisively with corruption, improves the ease and cost of doing business, gets skilled farmers on the land and gives them tenure, then the misery of unemployment and hunger will continue unabated.

• Crecey Kuyedzwa is Fin24’s correspondent in Harare. Views expressed are her own.

Post published in: Featured

In what analysts have described as a major blow to the advent of mobile money and financial inclusion, the Zimbabwean central bank has banned mobile money agencies from facilitating cash withdrawals or deposits with immediate effect.

Zimbabwe is going through a serious cash crisis, with very few banks being able to provide depositors with physical cash. To get cash, Zimbabweans have been resorting to mobile money agencies who were illegally selling cash at a premium which reached 60% recently.

This facility of accessing cash through mobile money agencies has, however, now been banned, with the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe saying in a statement: “Some economic agents are engaging in illegal activities, abusing the cash-in, cash-out and cash-back facilities thereby compromising the public interest objectives of national payment systems in the economy.”

It added: “Notable activities include the buying and selling of cash through mobile money agents at high rates above the approved charges for cash-in and cash-out with some economic agents not banking cash sales under the disguise of cash-back services.

“The charging of commissions outside the approved framework adversely affects the smooth operation of payment systems and have the negative effect of distorting pricing of goods and services.”

The central bank directed all mobile payment system providers and merchants to discontinue cash-in and cash-out with immediate effect.

“Banks, mobile payment system providers and other economic agents are reminded of the need to ensure that the entire ecosystem operate within the confines of law and enforce compliance,” said RBZ deputy director financial markets and national payment systems, Josephat Mutepfa.

Analysts, however, described the move as firefighting, saying the central bank is dealing with symptoms and not solving the real problem, which is limited availability of cash.

“We have approximately $600m in circulation against $15bn in money supply, so there is a serious mismatch. We need to print physical notes,” said Harare-based analyst Walter Mandeya of Trigrams Investment.

Post published in: Business