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Oliver Kazunga, Senior Business Reporter
PARLIAMENTARIANS will meet in Victoria Falls next week to scrutinise public contributions ahead of the crafting of the 2016 national budget.

The august House has been rolling out marathon meetings on the budget across provinces in a bid to input on next year’s fiscal policy statement.

The committee, which is chaired by David Chapfika, completed the consultative meetings on Saturday.

Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa is set to present the 2016 national budget on November 28.

Yesterday, Chapfika said Parliamentary Portfolio Committees would meet next week meet to deliberate on the public input.

“We’ll now collate the input from all the centres that we visited. We visited over 20 centres and we’ll compile a report, which we’ll forward to the Minister of Finance and Economic Development for consideration,” he said.

“Between now and 21st of this month, we’re also continuing to receive some public input and on the 22nd of this month, we’ll have a workshop where the portfolio committees will provide an oversight while other ministries will also be consulting with the stakeholders in their respective committees.

“All that information will be presented at a workshop for Parliamentarians on the 22nd that will lead to a conference on the budget for Parliamentarians and other stakeholders from the 30th to the 3rd of November.”

During the just ended public hearings on the budget, Chapfika said concern was raised on the need for the government to improve on social service delivery and it’s involvement in financing capital projects.

“Social service delivery focuses on education, health and water provision. Capital projects including dam construction as well as support for civil servants in terms of reviewing their salaries are also major concerns,” he said.

The negative macro-economic climate has forced the country to revise downwards the economic growth target to 1,5 percent from the initial 3,2 percent.

The downward review has been attributed to the continued tight liquidity situation, lack of foreign direct investment inflows into the economy and the depressed capacity utilisation in the manufacturing sector.