Mthuli demands accountability, action on audit findings

CLOUDINE MATOLA IN JOHANNESBURG
Finance Minister Professor Mthuli Ncube has warned that weak governance and poor performance at public institutions are imposing a hidden cost on Zimbabwe’s economy, calling for stronger accountability and decisive action on audit findings.
Addressing the Chartered Governance and Accountancy Institute in Zimbabwe (CGI) annual conference in Johannesburg, South Africa, Professor Ncube said unresolved audit findings and underperforming state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were undermining national productivity, public trust and the wider business environment.
“All the findings must trigger immediate and decisive management and remediation,” he said.
“The public entity sits at the nerve centre of the economy. The weak performance of our state-owned enterprises imposes a tax on the entire private sector, on the entire economy. And strong performance unlocks national productivity.”
Professor Ncube challenged SOE board members to move beyond procedural oversight and take greater responsibility for institutional performance, arguing that their mandate extended beyond chairing meetings to ensuring that public resources delivered tangible economic and social returns.
“Board members must remember that they are custodians of public trust and not merely overseers of meetings,” he said.
“They should not just oversee meetings; they must oversee performance and assist in making sure these SOEs perform.”
His remarks underscore the importance of stronger governance, financial discipline and accountability in public institutions, where inefficiencies can constrain service delivery, weaken investor confidence and increase the cost of doing business.
Professor Ncube said public financial management should be anchored in transparency, disciplined budget execution and value for money, with government spending assessed by its impact rather than the speed at which allocated funds were disbursed.
“We should move from a culture of expenditure to a culture of performance. It’s just not a measure of how fast we are spending money, what we are spending it on. Rather, are we meeting our targets?” he said.
“Policy decisions do not implement themselves and budgets do not automatically build roads, generate megawatts, or increase hospitals. It is the people’s money.”
He said government needed to entrench a results-driven approach to public finance, ensuring that expenditure translated into measurable improvements in infrastructure, electricity generation, healthcare and other essential services.
“When we turn to public financial management, financial budgets credibly rest on execution and discipline. And hence, we need to shift our institutional mindset from an expenditure culture, simply spending what was allocated, to a performance culture that proves value for money, measures real outcomes, and saves the citizens,” Professor Ncube said.
The minister said Zimbabwe had made progress towards performance-based management, with public officials required to sign performance contracts against which their delivery was assessed.
“As government, we have shifted to this performance measurement culture. Every year, ministers sign performance contracts, all the way to the director, which are measured and tracked throughout the year against certain quantitative and qualitative targets,” he said.
“I’m pleased that we have made this progress.”
Beyond governance reforms, Professor Ncube called for closer industrial cooperation between Zimbabwe and South Africa to develop regional lithium beneficiation and battery manufacturing, arguing that Southern Africa needed to capture more value from its mineral resources rather than remain primarily a supplier of raw materials.
He said Zimbabwe could advance lithium processing beyond the extraction stage and explore opportunities in battery production, but that a viable regional strategy would require collaboration with South Africa, which has an established automotive industry.
“We can beneficiate up to lithium sulfate. We can go directly into lithium battery. But I also believe that to complete that strategy, we will need to collaborate with a country like South Africa because that is where there is a car industry,” he said.
Professor Ncube warned that countries in North Africa, including Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt, were competing for opportunities in the European automotive value chain, partly because of their proximity to major markets.
Those countries, he said, were positioning themselves to benefit from the transition towards electric vehicles, while Southern Africa risked forfeiting opportunities despite possessing substantial mineral resources.
“Those batteries go into the car industry, there has to be some form of collaboration. There are countries in the north of Africa that are already competing with us because they are closer to Europe, the European car industry,” he said.
“North African countries like Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, they compete with us, but we are the source of the mineral resources, so we have to get our act together here in Southern Africa. I believe that between Zimbabwe and South Africa, a lot can be done.”
His call for regional cooperation underscores the need to link mineral extraction with processing, manufacturing and established industrial markets if Southern Africa is to secure a greater share of the value generated by the global energy transition.