MDC Alliance vice-president Tendai Biti yesterday accused President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government of being “incompetent” and guilty of the struggles the Zimbabwean populace is facing.
Biti made these remarks during a presentation he did of the opposition party’s state of the economy address in Harare, Wednesdaya,d exactly a day before Zimbabwe’s Finance minister, Mthuli Ncube presented his 2021 national budget in Parliament on Thursday.
Among other things, Tendai accused Mnangagwa’s government of drowning the economy:
“The Zimbabwean economy is in an unprecedented tailspin and is suffering from massive headwinds across all sectors, whereby in 2019 the economy shrunk by a staggering 12,5%. What it essentially means is that we are back to depression economics
“This is in sharp contrast to what government claims when they say that the economy is on the mend, that it will soon reap benefits for the people, which will subsequently lead to a middle-income economy by 2030,” Biti said.
Biti said there is no hope in what Ncube planned for Zimbabwe’s economy.
“You will see that practically to all intents and purposes from 2016 onwards, the economy has been recording a sub-zero growth rates. Contrary to the estimations by Ncube in his 2021 budget strategy paper, we expect a below zero growth rate,” he said.
He said, as long as the RBZ continued to ignore the abused black market, it’s system would remain hollow in that there was still a thriving parallel market that was offering rates higher than those generated weekly by the official system.
“This myth will break, there will be an implosion as more and more demand on foreign currency increases.
“When the demand on foreign currency increases with a limited supply, the price will shoot up.
“So, the pretence of 80, 81, 79 is a myth and myth that will be shattered very soon.
“There has been a claim by this regime that the Dutch auction system has worked and has stabilised the prices. We contend that the Dutch auction system is not an auction system.
“An auction system is a free market, with free entry on both on supply side and on demand side.
“Regrettably, as far as the Dutch auction system is concerned, there is only one supply…only the Reserve Bank has been supplying foreign currency.
“So, where you have got one supplier, you can’t call that an auction. It’s a fixed exchange rate regime because he who controls the supply line, he who controls the tap, can control the value of the product,” Tendai said.
Biti dismissed allegations that sanctions were contributing to the economy crisis in Zimbabwe, adding that the ruling party was just using them as a scapegoat for their failures.
“The factors are primarily man made; the factors are primarily as a result of incompetence and cluelessness by government. We are returning to depression economics, because the Zimbabwean economy is very cyclical, it loves these booms and slumps, booms and slumps,” he said.
Biti said an MDC government would, when in power, adopt use of the South African rand
