The 48-year-old former commercial banker, a first term Reserve Bank Governor and the fourth since the country’s independence from white minority rule in 1980, was first appointed to the job in 2003. His term was due to expire on November 30.

Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister Samuel Mumbengegwi announced the appointment.

With an economy in the doldrums, drying investment, political uncertainty and record inflation of over 231 million percent -- the highest in the world -- Gono faces a Herculean task in a job he has approached with religious zest although with disappointing results.

In his first term, which coincided with dwindling international lines of credit for the country, declining investment, sanctions and political unrest, Gono has come in for criticism from the opposition and the International Monetary Fund who charge him with fuelling hyperinflation by printing money to fund “quasi-fiscal activities” -- mainly populist government projects.

Gono’s strategy of "cleansing and sanctification of the economy”, which he says targets illegality mainly in the business sector and banking, has forced several top businessmen into exile and attracted powerful foes within President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF party and outside.

Early on in his term, Gono identified inflation as a “cancer” to the Zimbabwe economy and set targets, vowing “failure is not an option” – a mantra that has been central to his unorthodox pursuit of economic stability in a country weighed down by a costly political stand-off between President Robert Mugabe and his main opposition rival, Morgan Tsvangirai.

Almost six months after Zimbabweans voted in presidential elections, whose outcome was disputed, the country still has no substantive government despite a September 15 power sharing agreement between Mugabe and his opposition rivals. An inclusive government is seen as the only route out of the economic decay that has spawned unprecedented suffering among ordinary Zimbabweans.

A deeply religious man who says he reads the Bible for guidance when “traditional economics” fail, Gono has stated his mission as tackling "ill-discipline, those who sleep on the wheel, the slackers and the rotten apples”.

His monetary policy statements and other official documents are punctuated with religious references, and occasionally threats of arrest for those identified as engaged in “economic crimes”.

Gono, reported earlier this year to have considered quitting the job, has been an opponent of price controls imposed across the board by Mugabe’s government.
But his condemnation of his boss has not been forthcoming.

“Anyone who says the bank governor should defy the head of state is violating a principle that Jesus Christ demanded of his disciples,” Gono said in an interview earlier this year. “A key element Christ looked for in his disciples was loyalty.”

Gono often laments that he has “the most difficult job” in central banking. Critics who blame him for the profligate printing of money, he says, don’t understand that “traditional economics do not fully apply in this country.”

Politics, he says, are “more dominant as far as the country’s economic difficulties are concerned.”

Zimbabwe’s big political problem, he insists, isn’t Mugabe but the failure of squabbling politicians to “speak with one voice.”

Despite his close ties to Mugabe, Gono once had a fairly good reputation in business circles. He was credited with turning the Commercial Bank of Zimbabwe, a failing also-ran, into the country’s third-biggest commercial bank. He also helped negotiate deals with Libya and other oil producers for deliveries of badly needed fuel.

After his appointment to the central bank in 2003 by Mugabe, Gono won plaudits for trying to tackle inflation. He raised interest rates and started to overhaul a foreign-exchange system that had been abused to great personal gain by Zanu PF insiders.

For a time, Gono even voiced measured criticism of Mugabe’s most disastrous policy, a land-reform drive that destroyed commercial farming and with it the backbone of Zimbabwe’s economy. Inflation, at around 600 percent when Gono took over, fell to under 150 percent.

The respite was brief. The country’s main source of foreign currency, farm exports, continued to fall. Government revenue dried up and pressure to print money to pay the salaries of soldiers and other civil servants became irresistible.

By mid-2005, inflation was again accelerating, eventually engulfing the economy.