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Govt Mulls Alternatives to Fund Health Insurance(AllAfrica Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Dr Paul Chimedza, deputy minister of Health, was one of the key speakers at the Association of Health Funders of Zimbabwe conference recently. THE Ministry of Health and Child Care is now exploring alternatives to raise cash for a proposed National Health Insurance (NHI) after Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa hijacked their idea of raising the money through tax on mobile phone airtime. Deputy Minister of Health and Child Care, Paul Chimedza, announced in July that government was mulling raising cash for the NHI by taxing airtime. But Chinamasa pulled the rug from under their feet after announcing a new tax on airtime, disrupting the ministry's plans. In his mid-term fiscal policy review announced last month, Chinamasa proposed "to levy excise duty of five percent on air time for voice and data, with effect from 15 September 2014". Most telecommunications firms have already increased airtime charges in line with the new tax. Chimedza told the Financial Gazette that his ministry would no longer raise cash fund through airtime, but noted they would no longer publicly announce their plans after Chinamasa torpedoed their efforts. "We can't all now tax airtime. That would not be feasible," Chimedza said, adding that although the way the Ministry of Finance had implemented its tax enhancing measure around airtime was not quite what his ministry had been mooting, it was similar. "It's the same concept," he said. "We are still working on it (NHI) but we do not want to go public yet. Our airtime idea was taken. We have seen that it is now better to work quietly in developing our fund," Chimedza said. He said he had always insisted that a key aspect of financing the health fund was to ensure that contributions would be harnessed from across the population in a manner that even people in the informal sector would also contribute. Airtime as a possible revenue enhancing source has proven to be lucrative following an increase in mobile subscribers from 13,6 million last year to 13,9 million at the end of June 2014, raising the mobile penetration rate to 106 percent. Similarly, use of internet data services rose to 43,1 percent over the same period, with data and internet subscribers growing by 2,9 percent to reach 5,6 million from 5,4 million. Copyright Financial Gazette. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). |