Africa-Press – Zimbabwe. <\/strong><\/span>HARARE \u2013 Soaring inflation and collapsing \u2018bond notes\u2019 are forcing more and more qualified people and professionals to flee the country.<\/p>\nZimbabwe\u2019s poor economic performance and depreciation of the surrogate currency, among many other factors, is causing untold suffering.<\/p>\n
Rural people have been especially hard-hit by the ever-rising cost of living and many have been forced to leave Zimbabwe ahead of general elections scheduled for 23 August.<\/p>\n
Rueben Mutingwa, a qualified electrical engineer, has been training to be a caregiver in the UK to earn a living \u2013 joining many other professionals fleeing the crisis at home.<\/p>\n
\u201cI could not find a job in Zimbabwe. Those I went to university with are earning less than $300 per month and that is if one is lucky to get the job,\u201d Mutingwa told Daily Maverick by phone from Birmingham.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I decided to be a caregiver here… My wife will be joining me soon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hundreds of young people graduating from tertiary institutions cannot find work and many resort to selling and using drugs.<\/p>\n
Public health workers and teachers say sala\u00adries of $300 and a lack of proper equipment make their jobs untenable.<\/p>\n
Many businesses have closed in recent years and the country\u2019s main labour body, Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, says the unemployment rate is 90%, though the Zimbabwe Statistical Agency puts it at 7.94%.<\/p>\n
Desperate Zimbabweans are going to South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, New Zealand, the UK and other countries.<\/p>\n
\u201cI could not access healthcare and could not pay school fees for my child; so I packed my bags and left,\u201d said Mutingwa.<\/p>\n
In the past three weeks, \u201cbond notes\u201d, as the currency is known, have lost more than 50% in value against the US dollar and other major currencies.<\/p>\n
This has been disastrous for the likes of father-of-three Mishrod Jemedze (39) of Chiweshe communal lands, about 150km north of the capital, Harare.<\/p>\n
Jemedze, who survives on growing maize and tobacco, says proceeds from the sale of crops are heavily eroded by inflation.<\/p>\n
\u2018Could have bought me a car\u2019<\/b><\/p>\n
\u201cI sold my maize and tobacco and I was paid partly in the local currency for my maize,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was surprised when I went to the nearby shops and all the money I earned from maize sales \u2013 that could have bought me a car at that moment \u2013 was not even enough to buy me three bags of ferti\u00adliser for the next cropping season.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the rural areas we do not have timeous updates on exchange market rates. It makes financial planning very difficult. We have to spend all our bond notes as soon as we get them to avoid a situation where the money loses its value in our pockets,\u201d says Jemedze.<\/p>\n
The gap between the official and parallel currency exchange widens every day and the cost of living shoots up all the time.<\/p>\n
The World Food Programme\u2019s Crop, Livestock and Fisheries Assessment Report indicates Zimbabwe will be cereal self-sufficient during the current consumption year (April 2023-March 2024) after an expected bumper harvest of 2.3 million metric tonnes for both livestock and human consumption.<\/p>\n
But the country\u2019s annual consumer price inflation skyrocketed to 175% in June, from 86.5% the previous month, according to the Zimbabwe Statistical Agency, marking a continued deviation from the downward trend recorded since the beginning of 2023.<\/p>\n
Zimbabwe\u2019s central bank governor John Mangudya said on 6 June he was raising the key lending rate by 10%, to 150%, to try to tame inflation.<\/p>\n
As the 23 August elections approach, the leaders of political parties are making promises of economic revival.<\/p>\n
\u2018Worse than Robert Mugabe\u2019<\/b><\/p>\n
President Emmerson Mnangagwa, seeking a second five-year term, says his Zanu-PF government has made significant strides in power generation and infrastructure development and has grown mining from $3-\u00adbillion in 2018 to a predicted $12-billion in revenue by the end of this year.<\/p>\n
Nelson Chamisa of Citizens Coalition for Change sounds a different note: \u201cMnangagwa has destroyed the economy in the last five years … more than what [former president Robert] Mugabe did in his 37 years in power. We will root out corruption in order for the country\u2019s economy to prosper.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saviour Kasukuwere, a kingpin of Generation 40, a Zanu-PF faction that unsuccessfully campaigned for former first lady Grace Mugabe to succeed her husband until he was forced to resign, says only a unity government can save the economy.<\/p>\n
Zimbabwe\u2019s economy nosedived when Mugabe embarked on chaotic land seizures in 2000 displacing about 4 500 white commercial farmers and leaving thousands of their employees without sources of income.<\/p>\n
Kasukuwere has vowed to make sure that the national cake was shared by all Zimbabweans not a few with links to Mnangagwa.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want everyone to benefit from the country\u2019s resources; we need to rebuild our economy by ensuring that the youth is involved in all economic development issues and this can only be done if we put responsible leadership in office,\u201d said Kasukuwere.<\/p>\n
Masimba John Manyanya, a former chief economist in Zimbabwe\u2019s finance ministry, says the economic problems can only be solved by effective macroeconomic policies.<\/p>\n
By contrast, Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube says Zimbabwe is doing all it can, including servicing its foreign debt, with a view to getting new lines of credit to help to revive the economy. \u201cWe hope to have cleared our foreign debt of about $14-billion by the end of 2025,\u201d said Ncube.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe government shall create a debt redemption fund to service other external liabilities in line with the arrears clearance program. This will be funded through new levies and other resource mobilisation initiatives. The assumption of the external obligations by treasury and the implementation of non-inflationary financing of the liabilities, coupled by sourcing of additional resources, will go a long way in reducing money supply growth and its impact on exchange rate depreciation and price increases,\u201d he added<\/p>\n
While politicians are promising heaven on earth and taking every available opportunity to outsmart each other, the big question is: Who among the presidential aspirants holds the keys to get Zimbabwe\u2019s economy working again?<\/p>\n
For More News And Analysis About Zimbabwe<\/a> Follow Africa-Press<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Frank Chikowore | Daily Maverick Africa-Press – Zimbabwe. HARARE \u2013 Soaring inflation and collapsing \u2018bond notes\u2019 are forcing more and more qualified people and professionals to flee the country. Zimbabwe\u2019s poor economic performance and depreciation of the surrogate currency, among many other factors, is causing untold suffering. Rural people have been especially hard-hit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":79914,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[1493,2189,19],"class_list":{"0":"post-79915","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-all-news","8":"category-files","9":"tag-africa-press","10":"tag-africa-press-zimbabwe-2","11":"tag-zimbabwe"},"yoast_head":"\n
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