LAST week, government gazetted rents and development levies payable by farmers on resettled land expropriated from former white owners. The move will affect about 300 000 beneficiaries and was made in terms of the Finance Act.
The farmers who will be affected are those on A1 farms, who will pay a rental levy of US$10 per year and a development levy of US$5 annually per farm.
A2 farmers, who occupy the bigger-sized farms and were meant to become the later-day commercial farmers, feeding the nation that plunged to a regional basket case once government embarked on its land reform programme from its former status as a regional breadbasket, will pay a rental levy of US$3 per hectare per year and a development levy of US$2 per hectare per year per farm.
By any measure, these levies are too little compared to the value the farmers yield from fully utilising these farms.
For example, for a 100 hectare farm, the total development levy will amount to US$200 per year, while the rental levy will amount to US$300 per year. This will bring the total to US$500, just a few dollars shy of the poverty datum line as determined by a Consumer Council of Zimbabwe monthly grocery basket for a standard Zimbabwean family.
The fact that these will be payable quarterly means that the burden will even be lighter for the farmers.
The new levies will affect all resettled farmers with permits or 99-year leases and would be used to fund development projects — gully reclamation and works related to soil conservation; provision, operation and maintenance of hospitals, clinics, dispensaries, schools, educational facilities and other related amenities; provision and maintenance of dipping tanks; and provision and maintenance of roads.
Obviously, the affected farmers are unlikely to welcome this move; they indicated last year that the levies would increase their tax burden, as they were already paying land tax to rural district councils.
But the motive by government is noble.
By forcing them to pay levies, government wants farmers to fully utilise their pieces of land, in the process increasing productivity on the farms.
Vast farmlands issued to new, black farmers lie idle across the country, unused because most of the beneficiaries acquired them for speculative purposes.
Most are derelict due to the fact that the new owners do not have the financial wherewithal to utilise the land, or lack the skills and commitment to be productive farmers.
The levy will therefore force the new landlords to become more committed and approach farming as a business.
We believe the new levies should have in fact included another tax to raise money to repay dispossessed white farmers who are yet to be compensated.
This should not be every Zimbabwean’s burden; it should be the responsibility of those who were allocated these farms and are directly benefitting from their occupation.