Zim recovery 'impossible'
2008-07-01 11:05
Special Report
Zimbabwe’s PM Morgan Tsvangirai has called for openness in the country’s nascent diamond trade, getting underway after the lifting of a global ban over rights abuses.
A dusty road leads to the village of Wedza, where veterans of Zimbabwe's liberation war eke out a meagre living on their farm cooperative, which after a promising start now brings only despair.
Sharm el-Sheikh - African leaders and international planners must pay more attention to the "astounding disaster" of Zimbabwe's economy, renowned development economist Jeffrey Sachs said on Tuesday.
Speaking on the sidelines of an African Union summit dominated by Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's widely discredited election win, Sachs warned there would be no economic recovery without political stability.
"This is one of the most astounding economic disasters in a peacetime economy in history," said Sachs, who was also special advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
"It's already in a hyperinflation of more than one million percent year over year and, until there is a legitimate government, it will not be possible for them to stabilise the economy."
Mugabe had overseen the collapse of Zimbabwe's once thriving agriculture sector and the country was short of even the most basic foodstuffs with most people surviving on two meals a day.
Collapse of living standards
Sachs said: "The rest of Africa has to realise, because with a profoundly destabilised Zimbabwe, millions of refugees spill over and the instability in the rest of the region will be pervasive.
"The fact of an inflation of more than one million percent a year should be taken note of by policy makers in Africa, by policy makers in the United States, by people that are attending to this."
"Already there's a complete collapse of living standards and even the ability to meet basic needs, and African leaders should understand that, international leaders should understand," he said.
"The reality is that, until there's a sound political situation, it's not possible to stabilise an economy in that situation. I think that if more attention were given to that it would be helpful."
Mugabe said the economic troubles stem from targeted sanctions imposed on him and his inner circle by the European Union and the United States after 2002 presidential elections judged by Western observers to be "fundamentally flawed".
"The sanctions didn't cause the state of the economy, gross rampant mismanagement caused the state of the economy," said Sachs.
At least 80% of Zimabawe's population lived below the poverty line, often skipping meals and walking or cycling to work in order to stretch their incomes to the next payday.
- AFP