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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=zimbabwe

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Thanks to Clive for the ping to this thread:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1801778/posts

"Gono admits meltdown (Zimbabwe Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono)"
Mail & Guardian (SA) ^ | 2007-03-07 | Andrew Meldrum

Posted on 03/16/2007 4:41:14 AM PDT by Clive

Zimbabwe central banker Gideon Gono . (Photograph Muntu Vilakazi)

ARTICLE SNIPPET: "Zimbabwe is hungry and broke, the country’s central bank governor has warned in a frank admission that President Robert Mugabe’s government is unable to provide adequate food supplies or maintain many basic services.

Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono told a parliamentary committee that he was struggling to keep the country’s electricity on and the air force aloft. He admitted he had no funds to buy police vehicles or print passports and that, unless drastic action was taken on rampant inflation, Zimbabwe could slump “to levels never dreamt before”.

The battered economy has become Mugabe’s most potent opponent and public anger is growing, say civic leaders. Since the beginning of the year, the economy has taken a lurching fall, with inflation soaring to nearly 1 600% and food and fuel shortages gripping the nation.

Scant hope of better times was offered by Gono when he came to the parliamentary committee on defence and home affairs on Tuesday to respond to appeals from the police, army and other departments for foreign currency to buy vehicles, vital equipment and basic materials.

Gono is favoured by Mugabe for his optimism, so many Zimbabweans will have been surprised by his bleak assessment, published in the state Herald newspaper this week.

He told the parliamentary group he received desperate calls daily from state food and petrol distributors, the national airline, and the state railway and power utility -- all demanding hard currency for imports. An official from the power utility called at dusk saying: “If you don’t give us money, the nation will be in darkness.”

But he said the bank’s priority was to allocate hard currency for imports of maize, Zimbabwe’s staple grain, to avert a looming food crisis. He admitted currency had been diverted from almost every government department to buy food.

Committee chairman of Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party, Claudius Makova, said its investigations showed that the police needed more than 15 000 vehicles but had 1 500. He said the air force needed $2-million to keep planes in the air.

The passport office had earlier said it had a backlog of 300 000 applications but could not produce any because it had no paper or ink. It is resorting to issuing emergency travel documents on plain paper.

Gono said he did not have the foreign currency to pay those urgent bills. He said Zimbabwe needed more than $2,5-billion “to function well” but he did not know where he could find the hard currency.

“If we were talking about local currency, I would say, ‘Don’t worry, in the next 30 minutes we will print money,’” he said, but added that he could not print US dollars or British pounds.

Gono blamed people who had taken over white-owned farms for failing to produce food. “There are some people who have become professional land occupiers, vandalising equipment and moving from one farm to another,” he said."