End land reforms now: Business
Friday 23 July 2010
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe — Urged to end land reforms
HARARE – Zimbabwe business leaders on Thursday urged President Robert Mugabe to conclude his controversial land reforms, saying focus should now shift to reviving production in the agricultural sector, once the base of the economy.
The Confederation of Zimbabwe Industry (CZI) said getting agriculture working again was critical to any plan to rebuild an economy that remains at risk of relapsing into recession despite showing signs of recovery since a coalition government formed by Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai came into office in February 2009.
“There must be an end to the land reform, having started (it) must come to an end,” CZI president Joseph Kanyenye told journalist in Harare.
Mugabe’s land reforms are blamed for plunging once self sufficient Zimbabwe into food shortages after the veteran leader failed to provide funds and skills training to black peasants resettled on former white farms to maintain production.
Poor performance in agricultural had far reaching consequences as hundreds of thousands of people lost jobs, while the manufacturing sector, starved of inputs from the key sector, virtually collapsed.
The coalition government has promised fresh land reforms that are more orderly but to date has failed to carry out a land audit that is critical to any programme to rectify the damage caused by Mugabe’s chaotic and often violent farm redistribution programme.
The administration has also failed to stop Mugabe’s supporters in the army and from his ZANU PF party from seizing more land from the country’s few remaining white commercial farmers.
Kanyenye, whose CZI is regarded as the voice of business in Zimbabwe, said in addition to fixing the agricultural sector the government must also address inadequate energy supplies, an inefficient telecommunication network and rising labour costs to help economic recovery.
The CZI boss put the cost of bringing Zimbabwe’s once robust manufacturing sector back on its feet at US$3 billion, money that is unavailable as multi-lateral institutions and rich Western countries remain reluctant to help.
“For the economic revival for the industries we believe a figure in the region of three billion, will probably do the trick,” the CZI chief said.
Zimbabwe’s economy registered its first growth in a decade last year after the coalition government implemented measures, including the adoption of multiple currencies that doused hyperinflation.
However economic experts as well as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) maintain that economy recovery remains fragile because of the government’s heavy dependence on imports and increasing wage demands from unionists at a time the country does not have access to balance of payment support.
The IMF and other multi-lateral lenders have refused to provide fresh loans until Harare clears outstanding debts, while rich Western nations are also reluctant to provide soft loans and grants, insisting the government must first step up the pace of democratic reforms, do more to uphold human rights and the rule of law. ZimOnline.