Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister has announced a 5 percent cut in the salaries of the president, ministers and senior civil servants, effective January 2019.
Finance Minister, Mthuli Ncube said this will help clear the payroll of ghost names and reduce spending by the state as he presented the 2019 budget to parliamentarians on Thursday.
Salaries of public servants absorb close to 90 percent of Zimbabwe’s income, plunging it into an economic crisis for two decades. Zimbabwe’s finance minister said he expects a 3.1 percent growth next year.
The $6.6 billion 2019 budget also provides $53 million in compensation to white farmers displaced from their lands as part of ex-president Robert Mugabe’s controversial land reforms.