By Tendai Matunhu

Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Professor Mthuli Ncube has revealed that Government is doing all it can to cushion civil servants and felt the pain with them as their salaries are racing against inflation.

Speaking during an interview with Zimpapers Television Network (ZTN) last week, Professor Ncube said, “It pains me to see their wages eroded by inflation. No employee wants to be in that situation and as the employer we don’t enjoy that situation. So we are determined that we cushion the civil servants. Often when we fail to act is because of resource constraint not because of a desire to want to.”

On the issue of 140% wage increase for civil servants Professor Mthuli said, “The 140% increase is within our budget and I am pleased we are able to do something for our civil servants salary. I am pleased with it because it is within the budget it is something that we can accommodate. As we go forward we would like to do more. Anything we do we mean well and we want our civil servants to feel that.”

The Minister also said Government was working to ensure that money supply remains stable to deal with inflation.

 “Exchange rate movement is what’s driving inflation in the first place. Money supply will deal with exchange rate and therefore deal with inflation so we have a target of the money supply growth. We are working hard to ensure it remains stable.

“Money supply growth is one of our targets in our economic reform agenda. As you know we have an appointed monetary policy committee and that is a very important development in our monetary policy conduct as a pillar for macro-economic management. There is always a high co-relation between the monetary supply, inflation and exchange rate movement,” he said.

Professor Ncube highlighted that Government is determined to make sure it sticks to currency stability. The priorities for 2020 are exchange rate stability through fiscal policy management and monetary policy management so as to keep the exchange rate stable.