RESERVE Bank Governor Gideon Gono’s proposal this week for the introduction of a gold-backed Zimbabwe dollar is an idea whose time has come. If implemented properly, the gold-backed local currency will resolve the liquidity crisis currently ravaging the sanctions-hit economy. … Read more
AS FAR as economic ideas go, Vice President Joice Mujuru’s contemplative bright spark regarding adopting the Chinese Yuan as Zimbabwe’s currency is the most unorthodox. With due respect to Mujuru, as economists we can only assume the statement was perhaps … Read more
MY COUSIN, Bessie, died last week. She was only 37. She had not been very well for a long time. She had been away for a lengthy period. Her husband, our mukuwasha brought her back to the village in her … Read more
DESPITE the recent ‘acting’ National Budget and ‘acting’ Monetary Policy Statement (MPS) being a progressive return to market economics, there still is a certain degree of ambivalence in the orthodox thinking on exchange rate policy which needs clarification. Should … Read more
THERE have been so many developments in the last week it is almost difficult to catch up. The feuding political parties have finally agreed to form a government of national unity ending years of bickering. The union, christened by … Read more
THOSE who recently visited Zimbabwe have reported that the country has been transformed into a poor version of New York, all prices are in US dollars, the prices are extortionist and there is nothing you can do about it. … Read more
I HAVEN’T read Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono’s book, Zimbabwe’s Casino Economy. Still I doubt that I would have found in it a solid explanation for dollarisation of the Zimbabwean economy, and especially its timing. So let me … Read more
THE failure by the SADC Summit last week to secure an agreement between the MDC and Zanu PF to equitably share cabinet posts is perhaps the clearest indication yet that a negotiated settlement of Zimbabwe’s political crisis is elusive and … Read more
