President Emmerson Mnangagwa has said his Government is managing the country’s economy better than the “much-vaunted” Government of National Unity (GNU).
Writing in his weekly column for The Sunday Mail, Mnangagwa said his Government has run the budget on a cash basis thereby avoiding un-budgeted overruns, and has done it better than the GNU.
When Tendai Biti was the Minister of Finance in the GNU, he was accused of withholding funds in order to sabotage ZANU PF programmes.
He popularised the phrase “eat what you kill” as he cut unnecessary public expenditure and ran the Government budget on a strict cash basis.
But President Mnangagwa believes the current Government has created a stable environment for businesses to grow despite the local currency losing value at an alarming rate and about half of the country living in extreme poverty. He wrote:
Government has pursued a prudent fiscal and monetary policy to guarantee macroeconomic stability.
Since the advent of the Second Republic, the Government budget has run on a cash basis, thus avoiding un-budgeted overruns.
This has never been so before, including under the much-vaunted Government of National Unity, GNU.
Because of this fiscal discipline, often pursued even at the expense of social delivery, space has since been created for businesses to grow in a stable environment where disequilibria are minimised. Indeed, this has been the case until now.
According to Business Weekly, Zimbabwe has been reeling under price and currency instability which has pushed the premium between the official and parallel market rates above 100 percent.
The official exchange rate itself is not stable and the local currency has lost approximately 40 percent of its value this year alone due to excessive money creation.
More: Pindula News