The Sunday Mail
Chris Chenga Open Economy
In economic management, the greatest challenge is dealing with or containing any downward trend. Without immediate and effective remedies, in terms of policy and structural reforms, a depressed economy can enter a long term spiral of worsening circumstances. Piling debt burdens, capital flight, brain-drain, fragile pricing structures, labour disputes and low standards of living are all symptoms of a downward spiral that Zimbabwean has been experiencing for several years now.
Often, it seems that we have dared this inevitable sequence by willingly retaining lethargic attitudes towards “home grown” policy and structural reform ideas.
Instead, we exert our enthusiasm in looking out for foreign prescriptions that we identify as unable to halt our slumping circumstance. Granted, as counter revolutionary as we may perceive Bretton Woods policy and structural prescriptions, there is a paradox in that we take them seriously!
Our peers have similar habit. At least twice a decade, many African countries, not just Zimbabwe, conduct impressive discourse of a critical analysis to IMF and World Bank prescriptions.
Just last week, Ghanaian President John Mahama, on an election campaign trail, proclaimed for his country to not expect being subjected to IMF consultations again in the near future. His objections to open market structuring and loan conditions were well articulated.
Likewise, former Zambian Finance Minister, Alex Chikwanda spent the greater part of his five year tenure expressing his discontent with having to engage the IMF to ease the economic slump due to Zambia’s prolonged over-dependence on copper exports.
Again, his contesting notions were well-versed within the context of foreign constructed economic prescriptions.
Evidently, African economic discourse has ample breadth for measured critique and evaluation of foreign prescribed policy and structural reform, particularly those presented by the IMF and World Bank.
The paradox then is why is African governance so inclined in critique of foreign prescribed policy and structural reform, yet it is our indigenous incapacity to proffer effective remedial policy and structural reforms to recurring ailing economies that finds us going back to the IMF and World Bank?
While Zambian governance can articulate astute disagreement with the IMF, the same governance has gone decades without figuring out how to diversify the economy from a single commodity’s exports.
Ghanaian authorities present reasoned discontent with IMF debt, yet it is the habitual fiscal mismanagement and crowding out of private sector that finds the central government with stubborn debt burdens every few years.
There is no parity in competence. It seems an African condition to preoccupy ourselves with what we do not want when it is advanced by somebody foreign.
However, we are less diligent in achieving what is desirable out of our own competence.
In Zimbabwe’s case, we have lethargic attitudes towards the potency of our own “home grown” policy and structural reforms.
Much so, Finance Minister Chinamasa’s tenure has been a prolonged narrative of anti-Bretton Woods contempt but vacuous indigenous counter argument.
At some point, it must be suggested that perhaps it is not a strong hand of imperialist intervention that hinders our economic fortunes, but more effectual is a weaker hand of deficient indigenous economic prescriptions.
If it is ill-advised to be guided by the IMF and World Bank, what is the trusted localized path of policy and structural reform?
As our economic circumstance suggests, we need an alternative which can be weighed on its own merit.
We can learn from our Asian counterparts who shared similar discontent with IMF and World Bank economic prescriptions.
The Asian Financial Crisis of the 1990s left many Asian countries at the mercy of international finance institutions.
However, with the acceptance of some incontestable IMF recommendations, some Asian countries forged their own proactive remedies to their distressing economic circumstance.
For instance, South Korean pursued intentional strategy, “Home of Innovation”, to assimilate technology with the hopes of birthing a competitive ICT sector to drive the economy.
Singapore handed a lot of responsibility to its Economic Development Board (EDB) to craft workable structural reforms to create sustainable investment, both domestic and foreign, as a cushion for potential financial crises.
These are home grown industrialization and investment strategies which were customized to respective nation’s economic ideology.
Expectedly, one can argue that Zimbabwe has crafted its own economic strategy before, most recently ZimAsset.
It is in Government’s own dispassionate approach where there is credible objection to our seriousness in doing for self. Likewise, it is reactive policy and structural reform such as SI 64, and bond notes, which indicate passive approaches to any long term strategy of national industrialization, or monetary system.
Our greatest challenge is not necessarily to look out for what we do not want from others.
What we must worry about is that we have not shown adequate capacity to achieve what we want for ourselves.
