FICTION films released in Hollywood usually make tonnes of cash each year at the Box Office whenever they are released like how Avengers: Infinity War has made over $2 billion since its initial release back in April.
What helps sell a fiction movie are the special effects which can sometimes make one overlook a film’s generic nature.
Likewise, the Zanu PF-led government’s fiction of a growing economy based on things such as agriculture, jobs and investment is different from the reality of high joblessness, cash shortages, decreased capacity utilisation, low exports, and increase in food insecurity, according to experts.
Yet, despite this, the State media has been constantly lauding the ‘new dispensation’ over investment deals that cannot be tracked, investor interest that has not translated and job growth which cannot be ascertained — the reality is Zimbabwe has worsened.
Also, many agricultural bodies have pointed to a less than stellar agricultural season, pointing to a possible increase in food insecurity.
The reality on the ground is one only has to look at government’s suddenly offering “goodies or rewards” to perspective voters to realise how the new dispensation has yet to do anything.
This realisation can be made by simply asking why a government which controls the legislative, executive and judiciary branches is only now offering to change the lives of vulnerable groups in the country in an election month. What happened in the more than seven months since November 2017?
In fact, if anything, since the coming in of the new dispensation, the economic woes have worsened with no end in sight.
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For example, just this week, FEWS NET a leading provider of early warning and analysis on food security of the US Agency for International Development agency, reported that the macroeconomic environment remains stressed due to cash shortages and high parallel market rates.
As reported by this paper on Monday, uncertainty around the upcoming elections has caused the parallel market rates to range between 70% and 80% for the greenback through EcoCash and bank transfers.
This has turned the formal sector into the alternative sector and the parallel market into the formal sector as more value money can be got from the latter.
If the situation had improved, either the rates would have gone down or disappeared entirely.
