Deputy Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Terrence Mukupe has claimed that Zimbabwe’s economic problems have been partly caused by incompetent Ministers of Finance with no background in finance. Mukupe inadvertently fired a broadside at his boss, Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa. Speaking at Transparency International Zimbabwe event last week, Mukupe said,
The problem we have in Zimbabwe is we have Ministers who are non-finance people making decisions on financial matters hence the country is in such a situation. The problem that we have had in Zimbabwe is we had a proper guy running the Finance Ministry and that was the late Bernard Chidzero and I think that was the last time our country had a surplus.
And then when you look at the decisions that the Finance Ministers have always been making whenever they have the issues with the budget, their default has always been to increase taxes. That is all you need to tell there has been limited capacity of thinking.
More: New Zimbabwe