Mugabe Criticised by US

Today on the television news coverage was carried of criticisms of Mugabe's economic policies by the United States. It has been pointed out that attempts to legislate for price reductions will lead to economic distortions that will create further shortages, either due to hoarding or panic buying of essential goods, such as diesel oil.

The fundamental problem is economic mismanagement. Statistics suggest that there has been rapid decline in each of the three key sectors to the Zimbabwean economy over the last ten years:- agriculture, manufacturing and tourism. Mugabe managed to negotiate a deal with Libya to provide continued supplies of oil, and that relationship goes back at least 7 years til 2000.

Now that the Zim dollar is effectively worthless on the international exchanges the unsurprising result is that essential supplies that have to be imported are escalating in price! Mugabe's response is to try and force a change on the internal price index. It is a short sighted policy that will lead to further economic distortions and greater problems.

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Mugabe' regime is economically incompetent. Moreover, the likelihood is the key ministers of government have their assets salted away overseas and therefore the crisis in the economy of Zimbabwe is of comparatively little interest to them, with only minor personal impacts.