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Zvamaida Murwira, Harare Bureau

THE Presidential Advisory Council yesterday presented a cocktail of recommendations to President Mnangagwa and Cabinet Ministers on how to fight corruption, a development that is set to add more impetus to Government’s commitment to combat the vice.

President Mnangagwa and several Cabinet Ministers held a three-hour meeting in which the PAC tabled a comprehensive report of recommendations on how to turn around the economy with measures to fight corruption taking centre stage.

In an interview soon after the meeting, PAC acting co-ordinator, Mr Edwin Manikai, said they had submitted several recommendations aimed at fortifying the fight against corruption.

“We presented our PAC fourth advisory note to His Excellency the President and he invited some of his Government ministers and officials. The fight against corruption was top on the agenda and we made some recommendations on how we believe we can improve and accelerate the fight against corruption,” said Mr Manikai.

He said President Mnangagwa accepted most of their recommendations as his Government had already been contemplating implementing some of them.

“The President agreed with us, I cannot tell you the exact nature of the input we made but we had two resolutions to support the fight against corruption which we believe are not only positive for the fight in order to improve the business environment but tried and tested in other jurisdictions, so we are not going into unchartered territories, we have examples, in fact one of the things we recommended we have done it in this country successfully before,” said Mr Manikai.

“The President was actually supportive and he said it was not new, it was something that his Government was contemplating and our endorsement confirms that it is the right direction. So we hope to see virtually immediate traction and velocity on the fight against corruption. We have proposed to fortify the capacity to do the job, we have also proposed to utilise local but experienced qualified people to assist the Government.”

On the economy, Mr Manikai said the PAC had long advised the Government to liberalise the foreign exchange and fuel market, which he said Government had embraced recently.

“We have the right policies that have been announced, the opening up is the way to go, the same people that were complaining that things were closed and there was too much administration on fuel, are now complaining why it has been opened,” said Mr Manikai.

He commended President Mnangagwa for accepting most of their recommendations.

“We are grateful that he has been accepting most of our recommendations which are open market-based recommendations. We are not politicians, we are experts and we have been giving advice accordingly,” said Mr Manikai.

Some of the recommendations the PAC submitted were on the need to align laws with the Constitution which he said the Government had already embarked upon.

He said they had also recommended the setting up of an Inter-ministerial committee to introduce social safety nets aimed at cushioning vulnerable people against major decisions being taken by Government which are initially painful but would subsequently bear fruit.