HARARE: As the economy continues to implode, legislators and business are meeting in Kadoma next week to explore short term interventions needed to arrest the current economic situation characterised by a debilitating liquidity crunch and company closures, businessdigest has learnt.
The meeting, which will be held on Wednesday and Thursday next week, comes at a time government has suspended civil servants bonuses for the next two years as the liquidity crisis takes its toll.
Employers Confederation of Zimbabwe (Emcoz) executive director John Mufukare told businessdigest that the legislators and business meeting will be attended by representatives of parliament’s three portfolio committees.
“Business and legislators will meet on the 23rd and 24th of April in Kadoma,” Mufukare said. “The legislators will be from three parliamentary portfolio committees and these are the fiscal policy, industry and commerce and the labour and social welfare committees. We will be looking at short term interventions to be taken to recover the economy.”
Mufukare said each of the three committees would be represented by five of its members as well as their respective chairpersons.He said Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa and Reserve Bank governor John Mangudya would make presentations at the meeting which will be interrogated by representatives of the business community at the meeting.
Meanwhile, Mufukare said the announcement by Chinamasa on Monday that government will suspend bonuses for civil servants in 2015 and 2016 are an indication that the economy is shrinking.Chinamasa said the government is suspending bonuses to create fiscal space to fund its economic blueprint Zim-Asset.