Foreign Affairs ministry underfunded

Zimbabwe is underfunding its foreign missions, according to the Quarterly Budget Performance Report on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade for 2021, a situation seriously undermining the country’s engagement and re-engagement agenda.

The country, which has been under sanctions of the US and its allies since the turn of the millennium for alleged human rights abuse is on a drive to re-engage the global community in a bid to attract foreign direct investment and open new lines of credit.

The drive has seen President Mnangagwa’s administration applying for re-admission into the Commonwealth, scraping laws that undermined investor confidence, agreed to compensate former commercial white farmers among others.

According to the Quarterly Budget Performance Report on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade for 2021 released recently, late disbursements of funds by the Treasury coupled with failure to release actual budgeted money were cited as among the major constraints affecting the operations of the ministry.

But the Treasury said the overall budget performance was affected by inflation which resulted in most ministries failing to drawdown to implement their budget-based programmes.

“It is not because the money is not there but the budget was affected by inflation and ministries were no longer able to drawdown,” Treasury spokesperson Clive Mpambela said.

However, analysts say while inflation has affected budget performance, the major challenge is late disbursements, which has led to the erosion of the value of money.

“The utilisation of the funds can be enhanced if the ministry disburses the funds on time,” said an international relations lecturer at a local private university, who asked not to be named for professional reasons.

“The role of the ministry should never be undermined and needs to be adequately funded to allow smooth operations.”

The report was presented by Foreign Affairs and International Trade Minister Frederick Shava before the Portfolio Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

“There are several instances where the funds allocated to the ministry fell short of the required funds by 83 percent,” Gift Mugano, an economics professor said when asked to comment on the report.

“To make matters worse, the Ministry of Finance religiously failed to disburse the very same meagre resources.”

By September 2021, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had only received 31 percent of its total budget. Likewise, in 2022, the mid-term budget review shows that only 21 percent had been disbursed.

“This has negatively affected the capacity of our foreign missions to function while at the same time affecting the well-being of our officials,” said Prof Mugano.

“In view of the central role the embassies have to play in economic diplomacy and acting as an extension of ZimTrade and Zimbabwe Investment Development Agency on promoting trade and investment, there is a need for the Treasury to take a paradigm shift in its approach in as far as allocation and disbursement of resources to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

“To be specific, there is a need to provide reasonable budgets which are informed by the various activities and specific needs.”

According to the report, the ministry had planned to rehabilitate four of Zimbabwe’s foreign missions namely, Windhoek (Namibia), Geneva (Switzerland), Paris (France) and Gaborone (Botswana), and to buy three new chanceries and three residences in Ankara, Kigali and Abu Dhabi. It also wanted to buy furniture and equipment in Pretoria, Maputo, Windhoek and Washington.

“However, due to delays in the release of funds as well as non-disbursement of the huge chunk of the ministry’s total budget allocation, this was not fully achieved in 2021,” reads the report.

“Bearing in mind that, our embassies are at the epicentre of the engagement and re-engagement exercise, a bedrock for attracting both foreign direct investments and diaspora investments.

The Committee observed that there was a need for Treasury to fully release the budget allocation for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade so that the Ministry expedites the refurbishment and construction of chanceries that befits the office of our Ambassadors,” reads the report.-ebusinessweekly