The Sunday Mail
Clemence Machadu
Howdy folks! Am I the only one who is now tired of attending those economic conferences, workshops, seminars, symposiums, meetings or whatever name they go with these days?
If you know the drill when it comes to those events, some experts will bore you with their long Powerpoint presentations and then pitch a couple of recommendations at the end.
They will cite examples of a few growing economies and then tell you how Zimbabwe can be like those countries if this and that is done.
Government will then “call upon” the private sector to do better and the private sector will cite a cocktail of measures that Government should do for them to move a centimetre away from their current situation.
A few jokes will be made; everyone laughs and before you know it, everyone is hungry and the whole thing is rushed so that people can go for lunch.
Then everyone goes back to where they came from after that.
Wait a week or so then another one comes.
Different venue, different hosts, different topics, different theme; but the audience is usually the same. The presenters, too. History will then repeat itself.
And that has been going like that for years.
Sometimes I wonder if the widely sought-after folks don’t get tired of repeating themselves every other day.
I really wonder whether these folks get enough time to really focus on their jobs or sit in their offices to meditate.
Folks, it becomes monotonous to attend events where you are shown the same enemy that has been pointed at as the author of our misery in just about every other forum you have recently been to.
Some of us are tired of being bombarded with the same Powerpoint slides that are recycled from time to time and the usual truth that is always highlighted in those discourses.
When you come to think of it, why is the truth so difficult to embrace and obey?
And if we all know the truth, then why are we living a lie? Are we prepared to find each other and walk in the path of the truth that convicts us?
Or we just mention it just for the purposes of those events?
If corruption is the number one enemy in the country, then why is it still wreaking havoc everywhere? It still stinks at the Passport Office and Vehicle Inspection Department just as it still stinks to the high heavens at some other public offices.
They may no longer be taking electronic payments as bribes these days as cash proves to be king, and corruption continues like that.
Folks, we are tired of being told, year in year out, that excessive Treasury bills and over-lending of the overdraft facility to Government by the Central Bank have created a de facto bad local currency that is chasing away good money, the greenback that is.
The point is: What are we doing about it?
Why do we continue to fall in the same trap that we fell in before and got injured? Inga wani chinokanganwa idemo, kwete chitsiga.
If the law is unequivocal that the Central Bank’s lending limit to Government must not exceed the regulated 20 percent of the previous year’s revenue of the State, why do we always find Government exceeding that limit beyond what could be imagined? And why does the Central Bank allow that to happen?
The truth on this slide should be implemented for once, folks.
Folks, yes we are in a new dispensation, but we should never act as if previous circumstances can just be wished away and off they vanish.
There is need for concrete action.
We have to take account for every achievement we want in our economy. Otherwise we will continue to struggle with the ghosts of yesteryear.
Later folks!
Clemence Machadu is an economist, researcher and consultant. He writes for The Sunday Mail in his personal capacity.
