Tinashe Sambiri|MDC Alliance Deputy president, Hon Tendai Biti, has described Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube’s National Budget Presentation as a damp squib.

The budget has not addressed key matters affecting ordinary Zimbabweans, according to Hon Biti.

Below is Hon Biti’s argument:

“Joining SACU and the RMU is only logical … The USD has appreciated by 19 % in last two years so Zim must devalue same to a currency that’s weak but credible . Rand offers that .

Besides that is the faster way to SADC integration with all its economies of scale…

As expected this was yet another damp squib.A real missed opportunity to address the key distortion in the economy which is FX & monetary policy. The fiction of ZWL$ is not working .Real value , real wages & real incomes needed to be restored . Maintaining ZWL$ fiction is madness

The failure to restore USD wages and pensions is the ultimate theft & failure by regime .Failure to deal decisively with pensions&the Justice Smith Inquiry recommendations another disaster The raft of tax measures proposed are anti poor & anti people particularly presumptive taxes

The tax attack in the informal economy , the levying of taxes in USD, the punitive taxes on fuel makes the 2021 budget is vicious anti- working class budget. Budget assumptions are a pipe dream & 7% GDP growth rate is an illusion . The country is trouble . #ZimbabweanLivesMatter