HARARE - The International Monetary Fund (IMF) this week warned that the country is in a precarious position and this should be a wake-up call to the government, which went into a deep slumber after the controversial election victory last year.
For the past few months, we have been telling it like it is, that the economy is not performing and that as a country, we are not going anywhere without proper policies in place. However, it seems government has been ignoring our warnings to the detriment of millions of Zimbabweans who continue to wallow in poverty.
We sincerely hope that government will take seriously what the IMF said about our economy, which is deteriorating at an alarming rate.
The Bretton-Woods institution noted that “Zimbabwe faces serious medium-term challenges and achieving sustainable, inclusive growth will require strong macroeconomic and financial policies, an enabling business environment, and normalised relations with creditors”.
All the macro-economic indicators in Zimbabwe, from inflation to balance of payments, retail sales, employment and broad money growth to gross domestic product (GDP) growth are pointing to more gloomy days ahead if no concrete steps are taken by government to reverse the massive de-industrialisation taking place in the country.
The World Bank last week also warned that by 2016, we will not record any economic growth and reading into the current deflation trends, it’s not surprising that the country will slide into full-blown recession by the end of this year.
The new economic blueprint, Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim Asset), like other such documents, has not excited economists and business executives.
The fact that Zimbabwe is characterised by significant social deficits and is susceptible to crises is indicative that the 14 economic blueprints implemented since independence have not leveraged sustained growth and poverty reduction.
There is an emerging consensus in development discourse that for economic programmes to succeed, it requires national ownership and stakeholder participation in all the stages of the policy cycle — from formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
It is for this reason that the international development framework requires government leadership in designing policies, with stakeholder participation to engender national ownership.
The biggest challenge we are facing as a nation is the failure to address the most binding constraints, which has resulted in anaemic growth, liquidity crunch, lack of competitiveness and structural regression reflected in persistent de-industrialisation, informalisation of the economy and entrenched poverty.