eBusiness Weekly
Kudzanai Sharara
This week, Government promulgated Statutory Instrument 246 of 2018, which will see illegal currency traders being sentenced to up to 10 years in jail. The regulations — Presidential Powers (Temporary Measures) (Amendment of Money Laundering and Proceeds of Crime Act and Exchange Control Act) Regulations, 2018 — came into effect on Monday as the authorities move to eradicate the foreign currency black market.
Under these regulations, Government will track unexplained movement of money in the financial system through the Unexplained Wealth Orders Statute, and those found wanting will face the full wrath of the law — a ten-year jail term for illegal forex traders, and confiscation of unexplained wealth.
If you recall, this is in line with what we called for last week, when we wrote, “Yes you have to be ruthless Mr President”.
In that article, borrowing heavily from South African columnist Solly Moeng, we pointed out that most of the challenges bedevilling the country, were a result of mismanagement of state resources, including corruption and incompetence from high profile individuals.
We thus commend President Mnangagwa for taking tough and radical measures to deal with one of the scourge in our economy, that of illegal foreign currency trading as well as accumulation of unexplained wealth.
We, however, believe that our problems go beyond just illegal foreign currency trading. We also have people who have benefited from Government assisted programmes, where they were supposed to pay back but have not bothered to do so.
In his Pre-Budget Statement, Finance and Economic Development Minister Mthuli Ncube, speaks to high default rate by farmers under Command Agriculture, effectively meaning the state will have to carry the debt burden worth millions of dollars. But as we know, the debt burden affects all Zimbabweans.
So in the same way that President Mnangagwa came up with the SI246/2018, Government should come up with various regulatory instruments that focus on productivity, especially on the farms and other strategic sectors where people have benefited from Government programmes.
These regulations could speak to the issue of clearing outstanding land taxes and off-setting these dues with farm produce. Unless the country is hit by natural disasters, there is no reason why farmers should renege from meeting their obligations, like what happened under Command Agriculture among other Government sponsored programmes that they benefited from in the past.
There must also be stipulations on the area under production as a percentage of total farm area to avoid having huge unutilised pieces of productive land.
Low levels of productivity in the agricultural sector necessitated Government to pay unsustainable high producer prices that have resulted in budget deficits amounting to several billions of dollars, so there is need for radical measures that push farmers towards utilising the land or lose it if they can’t.
We might also introduce laws that require compulsory membership to farming associations and inspections of farming activities by relevant agencies of government to ensure productive use of land. Such measures will be used to push people who benefited from the land reform to either use the land productively or surrender the farms to those who are waiting in line needing the land.
Such special regulations can then also be extended to cover other related areas such as corruption in the value chains, value addition and marketing of the produce, such that whatever is produced finds its way into our markets at fair prices and that tax revenues are collected from these activities.
We cannot allow anything to slow us down, said President Mnangagwa in an article published in the Financial Times, and in the same vain similar measures as those put in place to curb tracking unexplained movement of money in the financial system, will have to be put in place across the board.
As the President rightly puts it, piecemeal change would not be sufficient to tackle the problems that we face as a country.
