BY VENERANDA LANGA CIVIC society groups have amplified their voices seeking to know how the country’s debt ballooned to US$18 billion. The lobby groups are demanding debt transparency after taxpayers have been forced to pay huge amounts to settle previous government debts that were illegally acquired. Finance minister Mthuli Ncube, during his 2020 mid-term budget and economic review statement, told Parliament that total public and publicly guaranteed external debt stood at US$8,094 billion, while domestic debt stood at $12,89 billion. The virtual discussion was organised by the Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development (Zimcodd) and the Crisis Coalition in Zimbabwe (CiZC). CiZC Zimbabwe chairperson Rashid Mahiya said Zimbabwe’s debt situation was precarious. Mahiya said just recently, there was public outcry over the 2015 Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Debt Assumption Act where government took over US$1,2 billion debts currently being paid by taxpayers. Lawyer and researcher Alex Magaisa recently exposed beneficiaries of the farm mechanisation scheme, mainly Zanu PF officials that benefitted from amounts ranging from as much as US$2 million. “It is, therefore, important for members of the public to interrogate the debt situation in Zimbabwe and to know whether Parliament approved or disapproved the debt,” Mahiya said. Zimcodd executive director Janet Zhou said it was also imperative to look at the social and economic justice perspective of the debt situation in Zimbabwe. She said Zimbabwe has been in unsustainable debt levels since 2000. “We already know that our debt to gross domestic product (GDP) ratio is very high at 84%, and compared to the size of our economy, it is already an uncomfortable ratio,” Zhou said. “If you look at domestic debt, it shows that government has been violating in terms of debt to the national budget ratio because it should be aligned to the national budget of the previous year, but all this has been violated.” The Tendai Biti-led Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is currently looking at the Financial Adjustments Bill where Ncube brought the US$9,5 billion for condonation (forgiveness) before Parliament. Zhou said there was need to question the Zimbabwe Asset Management Corporation (Zamco) loans and to find out who the beneficiaries of those loans were. “We need to look at the issue of politicising the issue of debt because citizens are the ones that are told to tighten their belts, yet we do not know how we got to the $18 billion debts in the first place,” he said. Macdonald Lewanika from Accountability Lab Zimbabwe said there should be consistent disclosure of debt and what it was used for. “We need to ask ourselves whether government is consistently and timely disclosing the debts and giving us information around those transactions as well as why the debt level has reached 84% of GDP, yet it should be lower,” Lewanika said. Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions president Peter Mutasa said government and capitalists were greedy and looking at fattening their pockets at the expense of the public. “T