Budgeting consultation: Tackling issues, challenges and prospects

The minister of Local Government and Public Works reported that the 32 urban local authorities failed to attain annual performance targets, with 16% falling outside recommended values.

Why budget consultations?

RECENTLY, the minister of Local Government and Public Works reported that the 32 urban local authorities failed to attain annual performance targets, with 16% falling outside recommended values.

Similarly, the same applied to the 62 rural district councils, with 8% also falling outside recommended values.

In a nation whose constitution celebrates freedoms of thought, opinion, speech, and expression, budget consultations present an important opportunity for communities at ward, district, municipality, and national levels to freely or openly discuss intricate details of public budgeting and budget policies.

From the Rural District Councils Act, the Local Government and budget strategy papers from the Ministry of Finance, we derive crucial guidelines for budget engagements underpinned by social participation and dialogue.

The ultimate goal of budget engagements is exchange rate and price stability, revitalised growth, and efficient or effective local service provision and outcomes, as envisioned in the National Development Strategy 1. The issue is: what challenges, opportunities, and prospects exist at the district level in our quest for strong government institutions and high-impact budget processes?

As one of 10 districts in Mashonaland East Province, the expansive Goromonzi Rural District (GRD) stretches from the eastern to the northern and north-western peri-urban frontiers of Harare.

GRD presents an interesting case with its peculiar features as a peri-urban area, a rapidly growing population divided by economic inequalities, yet with significant opportunities for council levies presented by the diverse local economy.

Peri-urban Goromonzi needs a sustainable revenue base to address the expanding population demand for upgraded or modernised physical, health, education, water and sanitation, and social infrastructure. In 2025, health and educational facilities remain under-resourced and overcrowded, 30% of the road network is in a critical state, and communities lack adequate water access.

Issues

Recent reports by the Auditor-General highlight challenges of persistently rising public expenditures against the background of contracting revenues, raising the spectre of budget imbalances and ballooning debt for the public sector, including local authorities.

A worrisome trend for local authorities currently is the pervasive tendency for expenditures to rise without a commensurate expansion of local services. Despite the Auditor-General’s recommendations, local authorities continue to experience rising expenditures driven by increasing administration costs.

Against the background of high and rising population demand for local services, these trends point to the need for effective turnaround strategies in councils to cut administration or recurrent costs, improve administrative efficiency, contain or reduce overall expenditures, and boost revenues. This would minimise the likelihood of revenue or expenditure imbalances, deficits, and debt, as well as the pertinent risks of local service delivery failure.

Granted that local authorities operate within a broader context, turnaround strategies need to integrate, in particular, governance and macroeconomic issues.

In 2025, because of poor local revenue performance, most local councils depend on financial transfers from the central government for key local projects, such as devolution transfers.

This implies that timely and efficient disbursements of such funds become critical, as delays inevitably mean councils fail to attain local operational targets.

On the other hand, other economic factors weigh in to undermine local authority activities by depressing revenue flows into council coffers.

Thus, while public engagements are crucial for improved budget and policy performance, there is a need for comprehensive strategic reforms integrating the broader macroeconomic policy and administration or governance framework.

Successive Auditor-General’s reports have noted the need for tighter expenditure controls, greater transparency, and accountability in government, including central government departments, state utilities, and local authorities.

The 2024 Auditor-General’s report in particular highlighted intriguing cases of public corruption, pilferage, or illicit financial outflows, all of which act to undermine the effectiveness of public sector operations and public service delivery.

Challenges

A major challenge currently faced by Goromonzi Rural District Council is rising council expenditures without a commensurate expansion of local service delivery. When local authority expenditures persistently rise but without improvements in local service delivery, the implications are that disproportionately more resources are spent on administration, wages, salaries, and allowances, to the disadvantage of the ratepayers.

The Goromonzi district’s massive population growth impetus, driven by natural increases, high migrant inflows from the city, and migration from surrounding rural areas, as well as the widening economic inequalities between “urbanising” regions (wards 16 and 17), mining communities, and the predominantly communal wards, all imply high and rising demand for local services.

This means that every year, GRD needs more resources to address the growth in demand for land, water, social, education, and health services, roads, and other infrastructure.

The district’s high population growth, however, also means an expanding labour market and a potential for incomes which can be tapped into through council levies. A significant 30% of the Goromonzi district population are migrant workers who work in the city while living in the district.

Local employment opportunities imply local income growth, better local prospects for sustainable livelihoods, and expansion of the GRD resource base.

When work opportunities are created for residents from outside the district, the opposite happens.

The challenge is that the district’s population expansion is not matched by a commensurate expansion of local formal employment, incomes, or business opportunities that are significant, and where the council can impose levies for their budgeted revenues.

Historically, Goromonzi is renowned for commercial and communal agriculture, principally because of relative advantages in terms of soil and weather characteristics.

As a source of livelihood, agriculture remains a key pillar of economic growth across the nation, accounting for 17% of Zimbabwe’s GDP and 40% of export earnings, and therefore a potential source of revenue for local authorities through land or agricultural levies.

Over the past two decades, the productive base of the district has diversified to include mining. Reflecting a growing trend in Mashonaland East province, mining contributes a growing proportion to district economic activities in comparison with commercial and communal agriculture.

Mining accounts for 60% of national foreign currency inflows. However, in 2024, mining in Goromonzi contributed less than 15% to district council revenues.

Prospects

Key recommendations from regional policy conferences note that mining houses need to make more effective contributions towards education development, employment creation, poverty alleviation, and local sustainable development.

There is potential for significant benefits from the large gold and lithium mining operations in Goromonzi. Increased investments in value-addition processes mean new factories, jobs, incomes, taxes, and council levies, expanded social and physical infrastructure, better education, and healthcare.

However, the mining establishments must also address local population exposure to environmental hazards. In terms of water depletion, it is estimated that the mining of one tonne of lithium consumes more than two million litres of water , a significant challenge for, especially, communal agricultural settlements which are dependent on sub-terranean water sources.

The strategic role of local authorities is the delivery of key local services for a higher quality of life in the district. Public budget consultations therefore remain a key mechanism entrenching civic ownership of development programmes, promoting social responsibility and accountability, driven by the quest for a strong, productive economic base including large, medium, and small-scale agricultural, mining, horticulture, and business enterprises.

Manyanya and Musikanyangwe are economic development analysts based in Yafele Village in Goromonzi, Mashonaland East. These weekly articles are coordinated by Lovemore Kadenge, an independent consultant, managing consultant of Zawale Consultants (Pvt) Limited, past president of the Zimbabwe Economics Society and past president of the Chartered Governance & Accountancy Institute in Zimbabwe. — [email protected] or mobile: +263 772 382 852.

 

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