Paul Nyakazeya, Group Digital Editor 
FINANCE minister Mthuli Ncube’s mid-term budget review expected this month-end must consider submissions made by business.
Already, the country’s biggest business organisations have called on treasury to offer tax breaks to cushion industry, which might help reduce the cost of doing business as well as prices of goods and services.
The intermediated money transfer tax is one issue that business has since long raised and surely needs some form of consideration.
What is clear is that businesses are simply passing the burden on to consumers, making life unbearable for ordinary Zimbabweans.
Finance Minister, Mthuli Ncube
It is our hope that treasury will be honest and that its growth projections will be a true reflection of the prevailing economic situation.
If the country is to achieve any meaningful growth, the government has to listen more to business on how to deal with some of our economic problems. It doesn’t pay to come up with policies that are meant to massage the egos of certain political quarters when we genuinely know it won’t take us anywhere.
The brutal truth will save us from continuously kicking the can down the road.
At the moment, it is clear that the country’s number one enemy, inflation, which recently hit three-digit figures, should be tamed to stabilise prices of goods and services.
While the government has been crying over imported inflation due to the Russia-Ukraine war, which has turned out to be a global problem, there should be homegrown mechanisms to deal with the growing economic pressure.
As long as it is not being felt by the ordinary man on the street, claims that the economy is stable and projecting a humongous growth, is a sheer waste of time.
Economic turnaround can only be of meaning if it becomes palpable and benefits the poor and downtrodden.
Between now and the end of the month, Ncube still has time to make up his mind, make amendments where necessary, because people need something that resonates with them outside the theoretical frameworks that are far from being practical.
The long-suffering Zimbabweans want to see prices of basic goods and services stabilising or going down, they want food on the table and jobs.
Without that, to them there is no economic recovery and they will continue to ostracise the authorities for doing nothing to alleviate their plight.
We also hope there won’t be talk of surplus at a time when the government is up in arms with its workers over salaries, which have obviously been eroded by the ever-rising inflation and prices of goods and services.
