‘New govt should urgently implement economic policy changes’

Business Correspondent
THE incoming government should urgently implement economic policy changes to fast-track economic recovery, economic analyst Dr Eric Bloch has said.Zimbabwe held a watershed poll on Wednesday that is going to usher in a new government.

Following a decade of contraction from 1998 to 2008, the country’s economy faced a number of challenges such as economic sanctions that led to low capacity utilisation, external debt burden and unemployment.

Dr Bloch said the new government which is going to be voted into power should reduce spending that was gobbling most of the government income.

“The most urgent thing that the government should prioritise is to trim government spending. How we can justify the civil service wage bill which gobbles 90 percent of government income. We have got so many civil servants for a small country,” said Dr Bloch.

He said there was a need to put in place laws that would attract investment.
“The new government should modify tax laws to be compatible with the rest of the region so that they would attract investment,” said the economic analyst.

Dr Bloch said the new government should also speed up the privatisation of parastatals and get new capital injection.
“We need to accelerate the privatisation of parastatals so that they bring in new investment capital and enable them to upgrade their infrastructure and provide service delivery that is needed,” he said.