An IMF delegation is in Zimbabwe this week for crucial discussions on ways of resuscitating the devastated economy. The men from Washington will find the negotiations trying, to say the least, as the Zimbabweans have torn up all the economic rule-books.

In fact it is difficult to see that there is any point at all in proceeding with the planned meeting. The governing elite of Zimbabwe have clearly opted for a survival of the fittest law of the jungle - they just want to stay alive in their desperate attempt to cling to power. They don’t give a damn about the future of the country or its people.
The men from the IMF will find that the people they are talking to have personally prospered very well in the past six months. They have benefited from Mugabe’s patronage, and the fact that the economy is in even worse shape than when the IMF was there earlier this year, does not appear to bother them.

The foreign debt has ballooned to US$4 billion. And Zimbabwe has no foreign reserves whatsoever. They cannot even service the debt. Inflation, which is officially pegged at just over 1000%, is in reality nearer 2000%.

Government profligacy is still a major problem. For example, the budget presented last week by finance minister Herbert Murerwa projects an increase in spending of 5330% over this year! And this at a time when the tax base has shrunk virtually out of existence. The deficit will have to be financed by yet more borrowing. – leading to yet more inflation – which the IMF itself has predicted will top 4500% by the middle of next year.

Zimbabwe’s answer to these problems in the past has always been to print more money and as inflation bites, leading to restlessness among the population, their response has been to increase repression.

One of the problems the IMF delegation will face is that Zimbabweans are not prepared to look at their problems dispassionately in the interests of finding a solution. Politics is everything. The current rulers are not interested in taking any bitter pills that might cure the economic ills of the nation.

For example, they deliberately mis-diagnose the causes of the country’s problems – which are bad economic policies, mis-governance and institutionalised corruption - and instead insist on blaming the problems on so-called sanctions by the west, which are, in reality, little more than travel restrictions and an arms embargo.

Mugabe himself, much to the amusement of anyone with a modicum of sense, stated recently that the British navy had blockaded the Mozambican port of Beira to stop oil coming into the country!

The gentlemen of the IMF will also learn that the government is about to create an incomes and pricing commission, aimed at controlling the prices of a wide range of goods and services. The rationale behind this bears no relation whatsoever to the fundamental rules of economics.

The government has a pre-occupation with controlling prices as a populist strategy - without giving any regard to controlling the input costs.

This flies in the face of the IMF’s basic contention that governments should not interfere with business.
In addition, the Mugabe’s crazy Look East Policy – has wrecked the nation’s once prosperous and diverse industrial base and turned the economy into a cash and carry bazaar. The visit is, therefore, nothing more than an exercise in utter futility.



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Wilf Mbanga, one of the founders of the independent Zimbabwean daily newspaper "The Daily News", is currently living in the UK. He writes about the current situation in Zimbabwe.