Financial Adjustments Bill

via Mugabe assents to Financial Adjustments Bill – DailyNews Live.  15 June 2014  by Lloyd Mbiba

HARARE – President Robert Mugabe has signed into law the Financial Adjustments Bill 2014 and the Trafficking in Persons Bill.

In a general notice 250 of 2014 published in the Government Gazette Friday, the president assented to the Financial Adjustment Act 2014, which condones government’s unauthorised expenditure of $400 million for the year 2013.

If a government ministry or department spends money in any financial year in excess of the amount appropriated, the minister of Finance and Economic Development is required by section 307 of the Constitution to cause a bill condoning the unauthorised expenditure to be introduced in the National Assembly, seeking condonation of the unauthorised expenditure.

The bill sailed through the National Assembly, culminating in the president assenting to it.

Leading the pack of unauthorised spending in 2013 was the ministry of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs with $143 500 000.

The ministry of Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development was second with $81 934 000 of unauthorised expenditure.

Next came in the ministry of Home Affairs which overspent $77 900 000.

The office of the President and Cabinet $31 million in budget overruns.

When the Financial Adjustment Bill was gazetted in February this year, Vince Museve, an economic analyst, tore into government saying it was a bad move.

“This is not good for the economy because the government is trying to smuggle in it’s over expenditure via the backdoor,” he said.

“Where will the government find the money to finance last year over expenditure?

“The tax base is shrinking and we cannot borrow and this is bad economics. It is like a man who agrees with his wife to spend $500 and the wife goes on to spend $600. Where will the $100 come from? This will pile pressure on the family and have a snowball effect on their finances.”

Trafficking in Persons Act domesticates the Palermo Protocol that prevents, suppresses and punishes trafficking in persons, especially of women and children.

The Act provides for the prohibition, prevention and prosecution of the crime of trafficking in persons and the protection of victims.

It also seeks to appoint a committee on trafficking in persons with a mandate to formulate and implement a national plan of action against trafficking in persons.