The Sunday Mail
For most of us 2019 has been a difficult and tumultuous year as the Transitional StabilisationProgramme (TSP) kicked in and the layers of fairy tales and make-believe were stripped away to expose just how close we had come to running down our economy during the First Republic.
Now we are starting to rebuild. And all the doubting Thomases should simply do is walk into any supermarket and think back a year ago. The same products are still on the shelves. There are no shortages.
But instead of the shelves groaning under imports, creating jobs for others, the bulk of the products are now made here, in Zimbabwean factories that provide real jobs for Zimbabwean workers.
Our industrialists complain, but the complaints are of a different hue. A glance at the yearly, half-yearly and quarterly results of most manufacturers shows higher productivity and rising profits, along with a list of “must do” things.
There are product gaps for sure, things we used to make but stopped making because people wanted artificially priced imports.
This time last year our economy was in bad shape indeed and was on the verge of suddenly falling over a cliff with severe consequences across the land. Even if the floodgates of aid had been opened, this would have only postponed the disaster by a month or two.
We need to remember that the austerity programmes unveiled this year were not the cause of our troubles; they were the tools we needed to climb out of the very deep hole we were failing into. We had reached this stage because we consumed more than we produced, bought more than we sold and then kept pretending that the ever growing gaps were being plugged by real US dollars, not things we were printing ourselves.
For a quarter of a century the Zimbabwean economy was, at best, stagnant as we frittered away every chance of a new beginning in favour of short-term consumption. Now, by facing reality, we are ready to move ahead.
The worst is behind us. Economists tend to agree with the Government although, as usual with this particular breed, they are careful to stress that the Government has to keep its nerve, has to maintain its primary budget surplus even in emergencies, has to let market forces call the shots.
And that is what the Government has been doing. It has not been uncaring. Subsidies are, no doubt, needed on some products. But instead of ad hoc arrangements and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe selling foreign currency at some arbitrary rate to people who may, or on the other hand may not, be honest, the intervention has been specific to a point in the open market where it is possible to monitor, and, if necessary, arrest and charge.
The first of the new subsidies was for the Zimbabwe United Passenger Company (ZUPCO). The State bus firm was given the greenlight to rope in private bus and kombi owners, under tight operational control to build a fleet that would make a difference in long term. The subsidy comes from a percentage of the fuel prices and these are allowed to float according to the landed cost of refined petrol and diesel at Feruka and the market exchange rate, not some arbitrary figure.
There is obviously long way to go, but every week, every month, more kombis and more buses are joining the ZUPCO fleet. Progress may be slow, but we are moving forward at more than a crawl and already we are starting to witness what a fully-fledged ZUPCO service will be like. We are not talking: we are doing.
The new roller meal subsidy was designed to overcome all sorts of abuses and market distortions associated with the old maize subsidy. It turned out the rule book was a bit more complicated than expected, but some very important people were untangling this during the Christmas week and we now know what needs to be done. Sometimes the practical aspects bring up new challenges that must be resolved as a matter of urgency.
We have seen this in the major thrust of making it much easier to do business. Again we need to accelerate progress but we also need to remember that while a simple set of rules will work in 99 percent of cases, regrettably the final 1 percent will probably allow someone to steal $1 million without committing a crime. But we are getting there and the focus is now on how to untangle, not how to carry on as before. We even had our first full revision of the Companies Act for almost 70 years.
The Government, rightly, notes it has cleared the dross and that it is now up to the people to start producing. This is the correct approach. Governments do not produce; people do — and now Zimbabweans have the opportunities and must seize them. No longer will some faceless civil servant or RBZ official decide who gets ahead and who does not.
That will be decided by the brains and the hard work of the people and already, if you look around, you will see some rather interesting people with brains working hard to create something new, not just trying to lick the icing off someone else’s cake.
As 2019 gives way to 2020 let us remember that we cannot harvest what we do not sow: we cannot sell what we do not make. Every country that becomes rich has learned one basic lesson. It’s people, like you and me, who create that wealth, not shuffle the existing wealth.
Governments can open roads, Governments can track down robbers. But in the end it is us who are building Zimbabwe. But what the Government has now done is, by putting people first, to ensure that as we build we are building something real, not make believe.
So our resolutions for 2020 must be to produce, build and thus get ahead permanently.
