Has MDC panicked over Zimbabwe-IMF deal?

The Presidency of Mnangagwa has been characterized by a lavish lifestyle of hiring Swiss Dreamliners and a bloated Cabinet with three similar ministries running parallel to each other under different names.

The exchange rate has collapsed, figures are cooked up, fiscal appropriation was indexed in US dollars under a fictitious assumption that the bond note is equivalent to the US dollar.

A monetary policy statement meant to correct the myths has created a situation where the budget effectively shrinks from 8, 6 billion to 2,6  billion yet no expenditure is revised downwards.

In fact, the monetary policy fails to deal with the real exchange problems including the multiple rates of the US dollar versus the bond notes and the electronic transfer. As a result, the pricing system in the economy maintains three prices in respect of the above payment methods.

There are serious distortions on the market, most of which are deliberate; they benefit the elites who can still access US dollars at the 1:1 rate still maintained by section 43 of the RBZ Act.

More concerning is a forex retention scheme extended by the monetary policy announced in February 2019. Gold miners, tobacco farmers and many other exporters surrender up to 55% of their earnings in return for $RTGS.

The rate of retention is deliberately left undefined for purpose of manipulation to serve a patronage agenda. All this creates problems.

Zimbabweans find creative means to avoid the legal routes of receiving international payments resulting in loss of revenue. At the core of the failure to deal with problems bedeviling the economy is also the issue of corruption.

There is corruption in the fuel industry and prices are pegged to benefit a cartel yet affecting the economy and driving inflation.

There is corruption on forex exchange, statutes are loosely and vaguely thrown around to benefit the cartel. These are issues that cannot be solved by a Staff monitored program of the IMF.

They are issues of political will, governance and more importantly they are issues of political legitimacy. The SMP is an entry point for full support for the regime whilst bypassing reforms. It is unsustainable.

Zimbabwe needs genuine reforms and not slogans. The IMF is not and has never been able to hold tyrannical regimes to account. Instead, under the excuse of sovereignty and through the instrumentality of these SMPs it has bought breathing space for autocrats unwilling and incapable of reform.

In Zimbabwe, the IMF have compromised and lied for the purposes of creating Staff work for themselves especially during Patrick Chinamasa’s time around the Lima Plan. Their approach is not based on multi- stakeholder consultation meant to reach an objective understanding of the political economy.

That is why as MDC we reject the SMP.

The onus is on the regime to carry out the reforms it has undertaken to do so on its own terms. Those reforms are defined in the TSP and the 2019 budget. The regime needs to earn its right to be respected.

Given its track record of false starts and policy reversals, an SMP is a mendacious premature chlorination and endorsement of the failed military government.

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