Harare – Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, 92, lied that the country’s economy was on the rebound when it was actually in a sharp decline, opposition People’s Democratic Party charged on Tuesday.
In a statement, PDP national spokesperson Jacob Mafume said Mugabe’s speech to the nation on Independence Day showed that he was out of touch with reality.
Mafume said while Mugabe painted a bright picture of companies being resuscitated, the country’s economic growth rate in 2015 stood at minus 1.7% and was projected to be minus 3.8% by the end of 2016.
He added that unemployment levels stood at a staggering 90%, with 98% of youths employed in the informal sector, while 60% of companies operating in the country in 2010, including critical companies like ZIMASCO, Sable Chemicals and David Whitehead, had since closed shop .
“His comments are an insult to the millions of Zimbabweans who are living from hand to mouth as a result of the economic collapse, which Mugabe and his cronies have engineered for the past 36 years. If anything, the economy is in a recession as it continues to post negative growth,” Mafume said.
“In the 1980s the average economic growth rate was 7% per annum and industrial capacity utilisation was at 83% with the country being the second most industrialised country in sub-Saharan Africa after South Africa,” he said.
He said Zimbabwe, at independence, produced adequate food to feed itself and the rest of the region while its beef fetched competitive prices in the prime markets of Europe and generated massive foreign currency for the economy. During the same period, the country had solid gold reserves which stabilised the currency.
“Thirty-six years later the jewel of Africa has become a basket case of poverty, oppression, squalor, desperation and hopelessness, all because of Mugabe’s misplaced priorities,” he said.
Mafume said Zimbabwe, now ranked 150 out of 175 countries in the Corruption Perception index of 2015, had become the corruption capital of Africa.
“State enterprises have become a haven for corruption, primitive accumulation, corporate rot and general mismanagement. The leadership of these is characterised by patronage and breathtaking nepotism,” he said.
He said the NRZ (National Railways of Zimbabwe), which Mugabe claimed was being resuscitated, had turned out to the biggest museum in the world, while Air Zimbabwe, ZUPCO, GMB, Telone, Netone, ZESA and CSC were on the brink of total collapse and laden by huge debts.
“All these entities continue to hemorrhage millions from the fiscus as Mugabe’s government is keen to keep them operational as they are havens for perpetuating patronage and to provide cover for looting state resources via a discredited tendering system,” Mafume said.
The PDP spokesperson reiterated calls for a National Transitional Authority to spearhead political reforms in the country.
African News Agency