Farai Dziva|Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube has claimed economic saboteurs are behind the deepening crisis in the country.

He also accused the “saboteurs” of derailing government’s economic recovery efforts.

Ncube made the remarks in Parliament on Thursday during a Question and Answer session.

“We are doing various things. Firstly, we have increased civil servants salaries by 50 percent and this is temporary cushion while normal adjustment is taking place as we speak.

It is on the table. We have also added an allowance which is the US$75 for all the civil servants and again, that is meant to be an inflation protector during this difficult time.

That is what we are doing but the negotiations on salaries are going on as we speak. This is just a gesture from the employer to the employee to cushion them against vagaries of inflation. To be clear, the saboteurs are the people in the parallel market and not the policies,” claimed Ncube.

He added:
“The intention is to give leadership to the market and then stabilise the market in the process. Once the market is stable, the movement of prices will also be curtailed thereby slowing down inflation. That is really the intention of the auction system, to give better price discovery.

We allowed it during this Covid-19 period for two reasons. First, to give consumers and citizenry flexibility when they go about shopping and paying for goods and services and secondly, as a way to manage money supply growth by allowing into circulation and transaction activity what you already have in your pockets.”