Zimbabwean News You Can Trust
The Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC) last week applauded the government for scrapping the Value Added Tax (VAT) on beef and poultry products, describing the act as a “good move for the nation”.
The comment comes after the Permanent Secretary of Finance Ministry, George Guvamatanga, confirmed the positive development last week during a plenary discussion.
Addressing journalists at the sidelines of the fiscal insights forum held in Harare Thursday, ZCC president Bishop Ignatious Makumbe welcomed the scrapping of VAT on beef and poultry products, but insisted the church will not “comment against or for up until they make their own research”.
“We trust that when government strips out something, enough research will have been made, but we assume what the government did was a good move for the nation,” he said.
Bishop Makumbe also advised the government to leave “little space” on the operations of the private sector. He added that imposing VAT on products and properties is not enough to collect revenue, which will transform the country’s economy.
He said, “the government might not get enough revenue from taxing people, otherwise they will tax them to the throat. There are other ways of doing it, for example, when ZISCO steel and Dairy Board were in the hands of the government, things were flowing well. I think the government is leaving everything to the private sector to make a profit, so the government must do all what it should do and leave very little space to the private sector.”
The move to remove the beef and poultry tax was in response to a backlash following the Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube statement on the 2024 midterm budget and economic review, which moved to subject live animals and meat to a standard rating.
Southern African Parliamentary Support Trust (SAPST), University of Zimbabwe (UZ), World Bank representative and ZCC are organizations that attended the fiscal insights forum held in the Zimbabwean capital city last week.
