No bonus for civil servants?

Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa has skirted the bonus issue for the restive thousands of civil servants.

During his hour long 2017 national budget presentation in Parliament, Chinamasa was silent whether government workers would be awarded a bonus or not.

Civil servants unions had indicated that their members will gladly accept payments in bond notes.

President Robert Mugabe who was in attendance in the house for the second time in two days also avoided the issue during his State of the National Address on Tuesday.

Chinamasa was largely expected to make a pronouncement on the issue.

 However, early this year he said bonuses would be suspended for two years.

On bond notes, the finance minister said the uptake has been tremendous.

"The introduction of Bond Notes should spur private spending. The uptake  of Bond Notes was beyond our expectations" he said during a live broadcast.

A total of $17million worth of bond notes have been injected into the market since last week Monday.

Chinamasa said  total budget would be $4,1 billion and government would shell out $3billlion in employment costs "which represents decline from the estimated out-turn of US$3,4billion to year end 2016".