Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa has hinted at buying out top civil servants actively involved in commercial agriculture to allow them to concentrate on the lucrative private enterprise which, he admits, is distracting them from carrying out their daily government duties.
The treasury chief was speaking during a recent discussion forum which focused on finding solutions to the country's recurrent social and economic crises.
The Zanu PF official also defended government's controversial land reform programme which he said ought to have been as disruptive for it to have maximum impact.
During the high-level deliberations, Chinamasa was challenged by participants to come clean on the status of government bureaucrats who constantly break off from their daily duties to attend to farming businesses, in the process short-changing the tax payer.
In his response, Chinamasa admitted government duties and the farming business were both suffering under individuals who straddled the two time consuming responsibilities.
"I have been motivating debate within ourselves as government to say if we can mobilise resources where we can offer those who benefited from the land reform programme concessionary loans to establish themselves, fully permanently on the land, I think it will go quite a long way.
"It would also reduce our wage bill while also basically promoting production on otherwise idle land," Chinamasa said.
His comments come after top government officials, who include ministers and senior personnel in the country's security establishments, have grabbed and distributed among themselves, millions of dollars in farm inputs to produce maize under government's command agriculture scheme.
The Zanu PF-led administration also plans to extend the programme to other agricultural sectors such as livestock and fish farming.
The country's influential few have also been accused of abusing government resources such as vehicles and labour from their juniors to advance their farming businesses.
Prisoners have reportedly been used before on private farms belonging to senior correctional services officials.
President Robert Mugabe, owner of a giant agro-enterprise involving many farms, is chief culprit, as he uses as his manager, Agriculture Minister Joseph Made, who is on government pay roll.
In his comments, Chinamasa also said government's violent land reform programme was a revolution that could not have been done differently.
"Revolutions by their very nature disrupt production. You cannot wish a revolution without a revolution," he said of a programme that destroyed the country's mainstay agriculture.
"The land reform was a revolution and you cannot hope to have achieved it without disrupting production, without disrupting existing economic relationships.
"Because there were existing, which we had to disrupt but we are now talking about a new economy, to say how do we consolidate a new economy."
During the height of the land expropriation exercise on white land exercise, government came under fire for violating Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreements (BIPPA) which tied Harare to protecting properties belonging to other countries.
Last Thursday's conference was organised by a local think-tank SAPES Trust, Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, National Endowment for Democracy and Catham House.
It was attended by diplomats, civic leaders, MPs, academics and several opinion leaders.
