They are created by the day! Though it looks like more by the night!
Painona with Tapiwa Nyandoro
And each one adds hidden taxes to one of the highest taxed people in the world. The taxes they levy bypass the Legislature. These are quasi-autonomous organisations (quangos), the so-called policy implementation bodies for the government.
They are theoretically supposed to do the job that a much smaller government used to do.
Yet the previous governments, based on hard evidence, delivered their services more efficiently, and more cost effectively than the plethora of quangos now in place.
Add their collective expenses to the government’s own bloated expenses and it becomes clear that total government expenditure as percentage of gross domestic product may be the biggest drag to economic growth in the country. But still our Cabinet spawns them!
Jobs for the boys and girls for life! A transformational leadership that culls most of these bodies and brings back a much smaller bureaucracy with a new work ethic is what the country needs.
Administrative productivity has sunk so low as to turn into administrative toxicity, witness the recent Agricultural Marketing Authority (AMA)’s current work in progress in a bid to levy chicken farmers for services already being provided by other government departments!
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According to recent Press reports, proceedings went so badly that farmers’ representatives, attending a seminar recently organised by the predatory authority, accused AMA of “trying to destroy the poultry industry as it did the cotton industry”.
The latest incarnation of this burdensome lot known by the acronym quangos, is the National Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Board (Nieeb). It did not waste time levying rather hefty licensing fees, outside of Parliament’s oversight, on a beleaguered industry. Not a word of protest is expected from any quota.
Other useless statutory bodies still in evolution are the Office of the Banking Ombudsman and the Financial Development Council.
The latter, believe it or not, is to improve collaboration between different financial regulatory bodies; that is, other quangos! This is despite the fact that a well paid and enterprising under secretary in the Finance ministry working with the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe can do the job, as in fact, they may have done before.
Nobody wants the Nieeb either. A diligent under secretary in the Industry and Commerce ministry, working with his counterpart in the Finance ministry should be up to the task.
These bodies add unnecessary costs to an already ailing taxpayer and erode government corporate tax revenues. The majority of them should be scrapped.
Madame Fay Chung, an ex-minister of Zimbabwe, recently wrote a two-part article in the Press on prioritising proper budgeting by Treasury. She drew our attention to the paltry Budget for the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) with its threat to national food security.
She compared this to the bloated Travel&Subsistence Budget for the presidency and Cabinet.
She also drew attention to the bloated Civil Service headcount that has grown by 74 000 in the year 2000 to 162 000 in 2013.
She further pointed out that civil servants salaries gobble 69% of the 2013 Budget when 55% could be more tolerable. This would allow for better funding for essential State-owned enterprises such as GMB and for the Public Sector Investment Programme.
Clearly there are some quangos that are essential, such as GMB, but the majority is a waste of time and resources, more so when viewed in the light of government profligacy and a ballooning public sector.
At the very least one expected the bona fide public sector to shrink as the autonomous revenue agencies increased in number. But this has not happened. Instead the number of ministries increased! Reading the Medium-Term Development Plan and the Industrial Development Policy, you come across several instances where ministries explain their inaction due to the need to create more quangos first. One such tragic instance is the Agriculture ministry’s desire to form a quango to review the use of GMO seeds, something that a visit to SA by relevant under secretaries and or “directors” in that ministry and the Health ministry, together with the GMB’s Research&Development chief, if any, should be able to see through. Then of course there is the Human Rights Commission and the Anti-Corruption Commission, when all we need is a functioning and well funded honest police force, Parliament and Judiciary. As if this is not enough, soon we shall have a Constitutional Court! This way we spread thin, to a breaking point scarce resources meant for the Judiciary, Parliament and police. If we have to reform the police, Parliament and or the Judiciary, let that be the point of action. The theory behind these more or less useless bodies, such as the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority is impressive. It is the so called New public management (NPM) approach that requires the establishment of “autonomous revenue agencies”. UNDP working Paper Number 12 on Zimbabwe notes that: “Reaching the peak of its popularity in the 1990s and its application in many parts of Western Europe and North America during the Thatcher-Reagan years, NPM approaches also came to form part of the institutional reforms recommended by international development agencies and institutions”. The paper went on, “ . . . the more common application of NPM principles took the form of creation of semi-autonomous agencies for improved management of public resources and service delivery. Monitoring and evaluation of performance, as well as transparent reporting of results, were central to the approach. In addition the electorate, as consumers of public services and goods were to be seen as very much like customers in a market economy”. Well this has not happened. Chicken farmers recently vehemently disagreed. It is time for change. It is time to look to China, for independence of mind and to Japan, for a competent bureaucracy, as well as to the Nordic countries for the benefits of meritocracy candidness and transparency and how small countries can thrive.
