The Times informa que la Administración de Mugabe ha decidido abandonar los controles de precios y permitir que los ciudadanos comercien con la moneda que elijan, después de años de hiperinflación y escasez creciente. El Ministro de Finanzas ha admitido ante el Parlamento que los controles de precios estaban teniendo consecuencias no intencionadas muy dañinas para la economía. Copio la noticia casi entera porque es importante e ilustra el completo fracaso de las políticas económicas de corte socialista que ha implementado el Gobierno de Mugabe. No creo que salga en las portadas de muchos periódicos.
Zimbabwe sidelined its own near-worthless currency yesterday, declaring the US dollar, the British pound and even the Botswana Pula as legal tender in the country’s rapidly collapsing economy.
“The Government is allowing the use of multiple foreign currencies for business alongside the Zimbabwean dollar,” Patrick Chinamasa, the acting Finance Minister, announced in a humiliating admission that the Mugabe’s regime’s battle to prop up the national currency was lost. (...)
The Government began to pull back on its rigorous exchange control policy late last year when it issued licences to shops - at US$ 20,000 a time - to charge in foreign currency. Supermarket shelves that had been empty for over a year were suddenly filled with imported goods, but police were still arresting people dealing in hard currency outside the official system and searching bus passengers for foreign banknotes.
MPs in the house of assembly roared their approval as Mr Chinamasa announced the move that ends decades of Soviet bloc-type economic controls which have steadily eroded what was one of Africa’s most robust economies. He also loosened a wide range of restrictions that have contributed to the economy’s ruin. “It requires a paradigm shift in terms of acknowledging the reality that we cannot eat what we don’t have,” he said.
He cancelled price controls introduced in May last year that instantly caused shortages of goods which surfaced again on the black market at sharply steeper prices. The Prices and Incomes Commission, whose inspectors put thousands of struggling businessmen in jail for “overcharging” and often then looted their businesses, would be confined to “an advisory role,” Mr Chinamasa said.
The Finance Minister stunned MPs by accusing the country’s central bank w of fuelling inflation through “excessive money supply from unbudgeted expenditure”. Under its governor, Gideon Gono, the bank has adopted a proudly declared policy of printing money as fast as it could to bail out the Government’s reckless spending. The bank’s enthusiasm for printing money has been the most important factor driving Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation.
Bloomberg también se hace eco de la noticia.
(HT: Antiwar)
