Mugabe castigates IMF, World bank

PRESIDENT Mugabe has urged the international financial architecture to improve the legitimacy of the World Bank and IMF to ensure the full voice and participation of African States in a bid to achieve the post-2015 Development Agenda.

In the year 2000, UN member states agreed on targets on reducing poverty, increasing access to improved drinking water sources, improving the lives of slum dwellers and achieving gender parity in primary school.

For Zimbabwe, however, while others were fighting to end poverty, it has been a battle for survival against a ruinous economic sanctions regime that had deleterious effects on Government's attempts to achieve the MDGs.

The sanctions are estimated to have cost Zimbabwe over US$42 billion in revenue shrinking the economy by over 40 percent with devastating effects on livelihoods and jobs over the past 14 years. President Mugabe told delegates that the country's five-year economic blueprint, the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation fits into the post-2015 agenda

"We share the view in Sadc that the post-MDG agenda must be informed by national development priorities and that the new targets must better reflect local conditions.

"In this regard, Zimbabwe adopted its own economic blueprint, the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim-Asset). This is a bold and achievable development programme that has the objective of achieving inclusive economic growth, generation of decent jobs for all, affordable and reliable energy, food security, sustainable agriculture and development of reliable modern infrastructure.

"Through this programme we also aim to expand the industrial base which is key to sustained overall economic development as well as the human development of our country. We continue to push for the leveraging of our diverse and abundant resources through the beneficiation and value-addition of our resources.

"We, therefore, expect that the proposals in the sustainable development goals, which complement these of our national aspirations, will be endorsed and integrated in the post-2015 Development Agenda Framework," President Mugabe said.

The Post-2015 Development Agenda, President Mugabe said, could only be achieved through genuine and committed support for resource nationalism.

"Social justice, political stability and sustainable development in African countries can best be achieved through genuine and committed support for the ownership of means of production that favour the poor, who are in the majority.

"In Zimbabwe, my Government has gone a long way in laying the foundation for sustained food production through our Land Reform Programme. The majority of the rural people have been empowered to contribute to household and to national food security. The possession and exploitation of land has also turned them into masters of their own destiny, thus giving true meaning to our national independence and unquestioned sovereignty," he said.