Minister admits reforms not working

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BULAWAYO - A Zimbabwe government minister at the weekend admitted that the National Economic Development Priority Programme (NEDPP) set up earlier this year had failed to resuscitate the country’s comatose economy.
Economic Development Minister, Rugare Gumbo, said the NEDPP had failed because it was a hurried project set up to deal with a national emergency.
Addressing business leaders and parliamentarians during a three-day 2007 pre-budget seminar Gumbo said the government had failed to manage the programme.
“The problem with the NEDPP is that it came as an emergency to solve the economic crisis facing the country and I agree that we failed to manage it and therefore it did not bear the desired fruits. “We are human beings and we make mistakes,” Gumbo said.
The remarks were the first by a Zimbabwe government minister openly admitting that Harare’s economic reforms were not working.
President Robert Mugabe’s embattled government had touted the NEDPP, set up last April, as the panacea to the country’s economic crisis with Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor Gideon Gono consistently defending the programme as a huge success.
A confidential document prepared for the Economic Development Ministry leaked to ZimOnline last week also painted a picture of a government in crisis, ripped apart by serious infighting and uncommitted to ending a seven-year old recession.
The document entitled, “Memorandum to the National Security Council on the National Economic Development Priority Programme,” blamed the economic crisis on lack of urgency and lack of policy co-ordination by the government. - ZimOnline