By Sharon Tawuya
Bulawayo, (New Ziana) Speaker of the Zimbabwe Parliament Advocate Jacob Mudenda on Wednesday called for speedy and timely disbursement of appropriated budget funds, warning that the gap between allocation and utilisation is where developmental aspirations perish.
Officially opening the 2027 pre-Budget Seminar in Bulawayo, Mudenda said even the most visionary budget is rendered impotent when resources are not released timeously and utilised effectively.
“While Parliament may allocate with the noblest intentions, Treasury has, in some instances, failed to release appropriated funds on time, rendering those allocations ineffective,” he said.
He cited the 2026 Mid-Term Budget Review which showed overall budget utilisation at a “troubling” 42.5 percent at mid-year, despite Treasury collecting ZiG137.8 billion against a target of ZiG124.4 billion.
On the role of Parliamentarians in budget implementation and tracking, Mudenda said appropriation marks only the beginning of the constitutional responsibility of Parliament, not its end.
“Parliament must follow the money from the Treasury to the village clinic, the rural classroom and the community borehole and establish whether it delivered the service for which it was appropriated,” he said.
The oversight role is anchored in the Public Finance Management Act, which establishes a continuous chain of mandatory reporting that compels accounting officers to render accounts to Parliamentary Portfolio Committees through the Minister, beginning with monthly financial statements due within 30 days, followed by quarterly statements within 60 days after each quarter, and culminating in unaudited annual statements within 90 days of the close of the financial year.
Mudenda noted that the law, when read together with Section 299 of the Constitution, extends the accountability beyond Ministries to embrace all commissions, agencies and public entities that receive appropriated resources, on the principle that wherever public money travels, Parliamentary scrutiny should follow.
He added that the Public Funds Management Act and Section 309 of the Constitution further require all Ministries, departments and agencies to submit their accounts for audit, with the outcomes of those audits expected to inform subsequent budget allocations.
“Prudence forbids entrusting fresh public resources to those who have failed to account for what they have already received,” he said.
Mudenda urged legislators to insist on the integrity and punctuality of the reporting sequence and confront the entrenched practice of Ministries that prefer quarterly reports over monthly ones.
He said oversight should not be reduced to a belated formality, noting that reports are often submitted long after financial matters have been overtaken by events.
Mudenda urged MPs to consider shortening Statutory windows and to invoke disciplinary remedies provided under the Act, including publicly summoning accounting officers to explain non-compliance on the record.
He said programme-based budgeting and the Integrated Results-Based Management framework give practical force to this principle by requiring every dollar appropriated to be traceable to an output and every output to an outcome that citizens can see or experience.
The pre-Budget seminar, which is running from October 28 to 31 under the theme “Accelerating Economic Transformation and Building Resilience to Climate and Global Shocks,” is being held ahead of the 2027 National Budget presentation on November 19.
New Ziana
