(HERALD) ‘Unite against sanctions’

‘Unite against sanctions’
Deputy Business Editor

RESERVE Bank of Zimbabwe Governor Dr Gideon Gono yesterday urged different political parties to unite and fight the sanctions that have precipitated the decade-long economic spiral. He said the economy would not heal unless there was political coherence among the different political formations to fend off the Lucifer of sanctions. He said the economy would not play a one-man game and hope to ride through the current turbulence.

Dr Gono said the present economic set-up would not respond to textbook and conventional economics because Zimbabwe was now a new establishment to world economics. He said the central bank was handicapped in what it could do to "fix the national economy" in the absence of strong political will among all economic agents.

"The time has come for all of us to understand that our national economy does not exist in a vacuum nor does it exist as another world separate from our national politics," Dr Gono said in an interview.

"The economy and politics are inextricably intertwined such that it does not make sense for any one to expect the RBZ to fix the national economy somehow and turn it around for the better when political players continue to play bickering games over the way forward.

"Therefore, I cannot imagine, let alone proffer, any way forward in terms of reviving the economy given the current situation that is not based on and informed by a political economy of national unity.

"As such, the only way forward for our country is for Zimbabweans to come together and to speak with one voice to foster a national consensus that puts the country’s interests first."

RBZ has employed a variety of economic measures since Dr Gono took office in December 2003. The strategies, which include the tightening of monetary policy, liberalisation of the exchange rate and inflation targeting, worked only for a short time in 2004 when annual inflation fell in successive months.

The story has been a sorry one ever since. Inflation has fallen out of hand reaching a high of 165 000 percent at the end of February, according to official statistics.

GDP has declined by more than 30 percent in the last half-decade on weakening agricultural, mining and manufacturing output.

Regular Government interventions through the release of cheap funds for the productive sectors have not helped much.

Speculators have been quick, diving for the money, which was rechannelled towards financing parallel market activities.

Dr Gono blamed all this on sanctions, which Western nations have shielded under the veil of "targeted sanctions", but which, in fact, have caused immense suffering among the ordinary people.

Britain, the United States and their allies imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe in 2001 over differences with Harare’s land reforms.

The governor laid the blame squarely on "the diminished presence of economic patriotism showing itself in the form of the indiscipline and a get-rich-quick mentality by most economic players in the country; in the public and private sectors of our economy.

". . . the prevailing disharmony is very dangerous for our national survival and we need to confront it with an audacious commitment to national unity.

"For that to happen, the political players across the political divide need to stop being players and start being leaders who do the right thing for Zimbabwe and Zimbabweans," said Dr Gono.