The United State has become the second country to dispute Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube’s development aid figures presented in the National Budget.
The exposè has left Mthuli Ncube’s credibility as Finance Minister questionable as he is expected to give thoroughly investigated and highly accurate information failure to which may be enough cause for him to resign or to be fired.
A senior United States official working in Zimbabwe said that the development aid figures released by Mthuli Ncube in the 2020 national budget statement, are less than what his country provided in the 2019 financial year.
Deputy Ambassador Thomas Hastings, said the amount of financial aid to Zimbabwe this year was understated by the government.
“… They recently released the total amount of money that we gave in 2019, it was about $330 million. So, it was a bit more than it was in the budget report that’s the total amount that includes our work with PEPFAR (U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), it includes work that we have provided this year for food relief, people who are faced with food insecurity because of the drought and other causes it includes drought and any other causes and it also includes the assistance that was given to people who suffered the consequences of Cyclone Idai. So, putting all the numbers together it was over $330 million this year.”
Thomas said Zimbabwean authorities should include all the development aid provided by the United States in 2019.
“Well, it’s important to include all of the programs and that’s why we recently put the information out there to make sure that the total amount of our assistance was made on to the people of Zimbabwe.”
He could not be drawn to comment on suggestions that the undervaluing of the development aid provided by the Zimbabwean government was being deliberately done by President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government.
“I don’t know about that, you have to talk to the Ministry of Finance about how they came up with all those numbers … when you take the amount of work we do with health, with food assistance and Cyclone Idai and emergency relief, that’s how much it totaled.”
In the budget statement, Ncube indicated that Zimbabwe this year obtained development support from USA amounting to $252,722,653.
Mthuli Ncube also admitted understating the amount of financial aid that China gave to the Southern African nation in the first nine months of this year.
At the budget presentation, Ncube said the country received US$194 million from donor countries in the first three quarters, of which only US$3.6 million came from China. The Chinese embassy in Harare put the figure at US$136.8 million and urged the Zimbabwean government to “make a comprehensive assessment of the bilateral support figures and accurately reflect the actual situation when formulating the budget statement”.
The statement by Ncube, which was issued after the meeting with Chinese officials on the matter said that “the two sides agreed to continue working on a common accounting mechanism”.
It did not, however, specify the accounting formula to be used or the exact amount that Beijing has advanced to Zimbabwe between January and September 2019.