Unpacking Zimbabwe’s Enduring Economic Quagmire: Interrogating the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (ZimASSET)

Abstract

Following the ruling party’s victory in the July 31 2013 elections the ruling ZANU PF party crafted a new economic blueprint, The Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (ZimAsset). The blue print intends to achieve accelerated economic growth and wealth creation between October 2013 and December 2018. ZimAsset has four strategic clusters namely: Social Services and Poverty Reduction, Food Security and Nutrition, Infrastructure and Public Utilities and Value Addition and Beneficiation. These clusters act as the basis on which its objectives are anchored as well as the drivers of the development policy. This paper provides a critical analysis this blueprint, by taking a historical look at the economic policy of the country and hasten to argue that this country has never been short of blueprints. What has been lacking is implementation which could have been a result of a lack of resources, political will and corruption, among others. The economic policy is also bereft of an investment strategy making it difficult to leverage on the country’s mineral resources. The Indigenization and Economic Empowerment Act of 2008 is not doing the country’s efforts to attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) any good because in actual fact it is scaring away potential investors. This paper argues that given that ZimAsset’s implementation is premised on the availability of financial resources, which the country does not have and that FDI is not trickling in, it is bound to fail. The economic policy is ambitious, it wants to achieve almost everything within a 5 year period yet the country is thin on resources and so it hardly has any chance of taking Zimbabweans to the “Promised Land” of economic liberation and libealisation.

Keywords: Economic policy, ZimAsset, development strategy, Foreign Direct Investment