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(TALKZIMBABWE) Biti and the art of lying with statistics

Biti and the art of lying with statistics
Comment
Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:49:00 +0000

FINANCE Minister Tendai Biti latest budget statement and still have to understand his economic logic, which is clearly not working for Zimbabwe. The man has mastered the art of mass deception and lying with statistics, whilst acting like he is doing real work. It seems Biti just came up with a Budget as a matter of custom.

His budget is out of sync with the situation on the ground and he seems to have a very short memory when it comes to remembering his policy speeches. The minister is in the bad habit of throwing figures around.

At one time he said Zimbabwe needed US$10 billion to revive its economy, then it was US$8 billion. At the recent World Economic Forum Biti suggested that Zimbabwe needed US$6 billion to recover.

Biti should understand that when he talks about Zimbabwe's national debt and fails to factor it into the budget properly, he is merely playing games with the people of Zimbabwe, and doing himself a disservice.

This man has his priorities twisted. He removed duty on newspapers and capital goods into the country - some of the sources of the much needed foreign currency, and left local industry vulnerable.

Biti's budget delivered a killer blow to the struggling vehicle assembly industry, among other industries.

For example, by slashing duty to 25% from 40% to enable young professionals to buy cars, Biti inadvertently left the struggling car assemblers at the mercy of cheap imports.

This is likely to trigger retrenchments which goes against his thrust of brightening the faces of the 85% submerged and drowning poor.

It was shocking to hear him talk about the need to eliminate Zimbabwe's debt yesterday after meeting African Development Bank officials.

Zimbabwe's enormous foreign debt is hampering efforts to mend the economy, Biti said, urging the government urgently to resolve the debt crisis.

"Zimbabwe is suffering as a result of its debt overhead," Biti told journalists in Harare.

"We have to resolve our debt crisis as a matter of urgency."

"Without the debt overhead, we can grow (the economy) by up to 15 percent," Biti said. "We hope the government of Zimbabwe will take a bold decision and do what is best for the economy."

How can you eliminate the debt overhead when you are killing local industry, like the motor industry?

He said Zimbabwe had asked the ADB to "help in its process of re-engaging multilateral finance institutions."

Biti and his MDC-T party campaigned vigorously for sanctions against Zimbabwe and brought us where we are today.

A government report of December said various options were being considered for paying off the external debt, including asking for debt cancellation in a move to secure new financing from lenders.

How Biti hopes to get debt cancellation when his party is not campaigning for the removal of sanctions beggars belief.

Biti said the country will need 45 billion dollars to restore its economic performance to levels seen in 1996. Where is this new figure coming from compared with the US$10 billion, US$8 billion and US$6 billion needed to revive the economy?

Biti surely has read Darrell Huff's book, 'How To Lie With Statistics'.

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Labels: COLOUR REVOLUTIONS, NEOLIBERALISM, STATISTICS, TARIFFS, TENDAI BITI

posted by MrK @ 5:41 AM