State-led development will unlock economic opportunities

Gibson Nyikadzino
Correspondent

The foundation of economic development is the acquisition of more productive knowledge.

However, for developing countries, acquiring this knowledge has become more expensive since developed nations want to keep these economic knowledge epistemologies out of the reach of developing countries.

So for Zimbabwe to fare better, there has to be ideas that are formulated to address the challenges that are being faced in this modern environment.

Ideas are the most important inputs in producing new ideas. The ideas should be used to combat the challenges that are currently facing the country.

Ideas and technology are important in building a strong economy because economic development is about absorbing advanced foreign innovations.

Over the past month, prices of basic commodities have slightly been taking a northern trend.

That is natural since prices change when the economy changes. It follows that when prices go up in an economy where there are lots of new activities, hence creating demand.

While there are new economic activities obtaining in Zimbabwe, the state of the economy today furthermore needs critical attention and pragmatic state-led solutions to implement policies that enhance continued economic turnaround and propel it to post-industrialist modernisation and transformation.

This helps alleviate challenges that ordinary people are going through or are facing, to which at the just ended 20th Zanu PF Annual National People’s Conference a resolution that was passed to focus on economic address.

Improved production, price stabilisation, job creation, market and finance stability remain priorities for the economy.

A fierce pro-active approach is what is needed to combat ills such as inflation and pricing misalignments by speculative dealers that benefit from arbitrage.

That has been one inflationary factor.

Inflation is one form of taxation that is imposed without legislation and it is thought of as cruel tax because it hits in a many-sectored way, in an unplanned way and hits the most vulnerable people in a hard way.

Scientific curiosity that is endeared to help humanity is of far greater importance in Zimbabwe.

It is, therefore, key to highlight that the state in Zimbabwe is the only messiah and saviour to turnaround the economy and put it in a pathway of economic progress, growth and development.

On many occasions some economists have disparaged the idea of the state leading in sectors of production because their orientation is that the state must not have anything to do in running the economy.

Where they get those ideas, especially from the Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations liberal handbook in the West, they tend to forget that in those countries, western governments then and now actively participated in jump-starting their economies by financially, technologically, scientifically and innovatively supporting state-owned enterprises that were crucial in enhanced economic growth.

Zimbabwe needs to continue being revolutionary.

A lot of times it has been assumed that the private sector can kick start economic growth, however, that is less ideal as the private sector is more keen on profit-making and seizing opportunities that are financially driven, even at the expense of service delivery meant for the people.

In other instances, there have been calls for the privatisation of State-owned enterprises and those have come as antidotes to ensuring growth.

But there is a danger that if the state-owned enterprises are privatised, the transfer of wealth can be done too cheaply to the buyer.

In other ways, the privatisation initiatives in other instances have led to the stripping of assets of the State.

It should be understood that the rise of neo-liberalism during the past couple of decades made state-owned enterprises so unpopular in the public mind so much that successful State-owned enterprises want to underplay their connection with the state.

To protect the people and ensure that development is taking place, Government, while notions of public-private partnerships are noble, may also create huge monopolies in the electricity, transport, health, telecommunications, housing, construction and energy sectors to deter those inclined to profiteering.

This protects the consumers, too!

Government monopoly is good, though some say competition is healthy, but the modern private capital in a competitive environment is not good for the ordinary person.

This is so because it is expensive to the Government when it establishes the distribution networks by building infrastructure which private-sector firms and private capital want to use without any form of financing they put in developing the distribution networks.

How should the Zimbabwean State continue to lead in development?

Developmental projects being undertaken in infrastructure, funding of innovation hubs, research and development should be made and directed to the key areas that Government should have monopoly over.

Government monopoly is not wrong.

For example, Brazil, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, China and other European countries achieved very large successes because State-owned enterprises were at the forefront of technological modernisation.

Similarly, in Zimbabwe, State-led development through funding of State-owned enterprises should lead to technological modernisation in all critical sectors for the economy through a monetarist approach that promotes a cycle of development until sustenance is attained.

When the State is leading development, it means the people are the owners of the enterprises unlike transferring its wealth to private capital.

Thus, this makes the survival of the State-owned enterprise be modelled through political lobbying and raising productivity.

In the western world, the disparaging of State-owned enterprises and state-led development as a substitute for privatisation should not affect Zimbabwe.

That is the route all other countries took and they cannot kick the ladder away now because of the developed country status they have, and make arguments that they do not want others to do the same.

People must not be hypnotised by the mantra “private is good, public is bad”, that is reminiscent of the anti-human slogan of “four legs good, two legs bad” in George Orwell’s Animal Farm novel.

The privatisation of state-owned enterprises is a prescription imposed on the developing nations by the West, it is a neoliberal agenda, and the agenda of neoliberals in to hurt ordinary people while chasing for profits.

It is key for the state to lead in development and direct economic modernisation through state-owned enterprises.

Gibson Nyikadzino is a Media and International Politics researcher. He holds a MSc in Politics and International Relations.