Opinion / Columnist
Echoes from the past - with economy dying Chinamasa tells Dubai of 'unlocked' potential
06 Aug 2015 at 23:46hrs | Views
Zimbabwe's national economy is on its death bed with 18 000 workers laid off in three weeks and thousands more to follow and Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa tells would be investors in Dubai he has "unlocked" Zimbabwe's investment potential. This has echoes of Joseph Goebbels' "Nazi victory" speech with Russians, a few blocks away, to deliver the coup de grace!
Zimbabwe has failed to attract any Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) for years now because of the country's failure to address basic economic problems like mismanagement and corruption. No one would want to invest in a country whose economy was groaning under the burden of mismanagement and corrupt. Whatever little investment the country had enjoyed until then turned into a trickle in 2000 when the regime instituted its infamous seizure of white owned farms in contemptuous disregard of property ownership rights.
The trickle of FDI dried up completely when the regime followed the farm seizure with the passing of the Indigenisation Law in 2008 forcing all foreign investor with business equity valued at $ 500 000 or more to sell 51% of the shares to a local Zimbabwean(s).
After rigging the July 2013 national elections Mugabe was sure rigging economic recovery would be a walk in the park. He was told a thousand times there would be no economic recovery until measures were taken to end, by then, gross mismanagement and rampant corruption and the obnoxious Indigenisation law was scrapped. He has done nothing confident that his very ambitious $27 billion ZimAsset plan would deliver the recovery.
Ever since the rigged elections Mugabe and his ministers have criss-crossed the world begging for money to finance his ZimAsset plan. He has failed to get anyone, not even his "all weather friends", the Chinese and Russians, would bankroll his hare-brain scheme. The Chinese have told him they would finance "bankable projects" only, he wanted open ended budgetary support.
By the end of last year, 2014, and without a single dollar in his ZimAsset begging bowl; Mugabe finally accepted that his ZimAsset plan was died and with it his hope of economic recovery.
For the last two years the Zimbabwe economy has been die a slow but painful death with reports of more and more companies closing down and throwing their workers on the Mount Everest high unemployment rate of 90% plus and the government failing to raise enough revenue to pay its own workers let alone pay for anything else. The economic meltdown was real and socially and politically unsustainable; government urged again and again to bite the bullet and implement the required economic reforms but again and again has ignored the warning.
The laying off of 18 000 workers in three weeks at a time when government has directed parastatals to lay off workers and on its part government itself talking of its wage bill from 83% to 40% of collected revenue by laying off workers and/or reducing their wages. The economic decline is now accelerating because the significant drop in demand of goods and services cause by all these laid-off workers will trigger yet another wave of company closure and lay-offs.
If the national economy had been gasping for breath in the last six months the events of the last three weeks show things are now a lot worse, the national economy is coughing blood!
So with the national economy on its death bed, it really does not make any sense that the Minister of Finance, the nation's chief economist, should be travelling to distant lands to lure investors to invest in Zimbabwe. The country has done absolutely nothing to address the underlying causes of the economic meltdown which is why investors have shied away all these years. These would be investors would know Zimbabwe's a no-go country for investors and the situation will be even worse now with the national economy on its death bed.
Please someone tell me the story that Finance Minister is travelling to Dubai to woo investors is not true!
"Finance Minister, Patrick Chinamasa, is today expected to fly out to Dubai to court global investors at the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Zimbabwe (ICAZ)'s Winter School, where he has accepted to be the key note speaker," The Financial Gazette and Bulawayo 24 reported. The conference theme: "Expanding horizons, elevating minds - Unlocking Zimbabwe's tourism and investment potential", with the aim of showcasing Zimbabwe as a viable tourist and investment destination.
It the dying days of the Second World War, with the Russians literally blocks away from Adolf Hitler's bunker, Paul Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, gave a staring rallying address to new Nazi recruits drafted to join the army to fight for the fatherland and victory. History has the habit of repeating itself.
Finance Minister Chinamasa will be remembered as the minister whose failure to implement any meaningful economic reforms, even when it was abundantly clear without the reforms economy was doomed, took the national economy over the precipice. And with the national economy on its death bed Chinamasa, like Goebbels, still insisted that he had unlocked Zimbabwe's investment potential!
Pray the final demise of Zanu PF is now near upon us and that the tyrannical regime is not going to drag the nation any deeper as it sinks into the abyss!
Zimbabwe has failed to attract any Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) for years now because of the country's failure to address basic economic problems like mismanagement and corruption. No one would want to invest in a country whose economy was groaning under the burden of mismanagement and corrupt. Whatever little investment the country had enjoyed until then turned into a trickle in 2000 when the regime instituted its infamous seizure of white owned farms in contemptuous disregard of property ownership rights.
The trickle of FDI dried up completely when the regime followed the farm seizure with the passing of the Indigenisation Law in 2008 forcing all foreign investor with business equity valued at $ 500 000 or more to sell 51% of the shares to a local Zimbabwean(s).
After rigging the July 2013 national elections Mugabe was sure rigging economic recovery would be a walk in the park. He was told a thousand times there would be no economic recovery until measures were taken to end, by then, gross mismanagement and rampant corruption and the obnoxious Indigenisation law was scrapped. He has done nothing confident that his very ambitious $27 billion ZimAsset plan would deliver the recovery.
Ever since the rigged elections Mugabe and his ministers have criss-crossed the world begging for money to finance his ZimAsset plan. He has failed to get anyone, not even his "all weather friends", the Chinese and Russians, would bankroll his hare-brain scheme. The Chinese have told him they would finance "bankable projects" only, he wanted open ended budgetary support.
By the end of last year, 2014, and without a single dollar in his ZimAsset begging bowl; Mugabe finally accepted that his ZimAsset plan was died and with it his hope of economic recovery.
For the last two years the Zimbabwe economy has been die a slow but painful death with reports of more and more companies closing down and throwing their workers on the Mount Everest high unemployment rate of 90% plus and the government failing to raise enough revenue to pay its own workers let alone pay for anything else. The economic meltdown was real and socially and politically unsustainable; government urged again and again to bite the bullet and implement the required economic reforms but again and again has ignored the warning.
The laying off of 18 000 workers in three weeks at a time when government has directed parastatals to lay off workers and on its part government itself talking of its wage bill from 83% to 40% of collected revenue by laying off workers and/or reducing their wages. The economic decline is now accelerating because the significant drop in demand of goods and services cause by all these laid-off workers will trigger yet another wave of company closure and lay-offs.
If the national economy had been gasping for breath in the last six months the events of the last three weeks show things are now a lot worse, the national economy is coughing blood!
So with the national economy on its death bed, it really does not make any sense that the Minister of Finance, the nation's chief economist, should be travelling to distant lands to lure investors to invest in Zimbabwe. The country has done absolutely nothing to address the underlying causes of the economic meltdown which is why investors have shied away all these years. These would be investors would know Zimbabwe's a no-go country for investors and the situation will be even worse now with the national economy on its death bed.
Please someone tell me the story that Finance Minister is travelling to Dubai to woo investors is not true!
"Finance Minister, Patrick Chinamasa, is today expected to fly out to Dubai to court global investors at the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Zimbabwe (ICAZ)'s Winter School, where he has accepted to be the key note speaker," The Financial Gazette and Bulawayo 24 reported. The conference theme: "Expanding horizons, elevating minds - Unlocking Zimbabwe's tourism and investment potential", with the aim of showcasing Zimbabwe as a viable tourist and investment destination.
It the dying days of the Second World War, with the Russians literally blocks away from Adolf Hitler's bunker, Paul Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, gave a staring rallying address to new Nazi recruits drafted to join the army to fight for the fatherland and victory. History has the habit of repeating itself.
Finance Minister Chinamasa will be remembered as the minister whose failure to implement any meaningful economic reforms, even when it was abundantly clear without the reforms economy was doomed, took the national economy over the precipice. And with the national economy on its death bed Chinamasa, like Goebbels, still insisted that he had unlocked Zimbabwe's investment potential!
Pray the final demise of Zanu PF is now near upon us and that the tyrannical regime is not going to drag the nation any deeper as it sinks into the abyss!
Source - Wilbert Mukori
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