THE Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) says the year 2017 looks gloomier than 2016 due to the government’s failure to revise its anti-investment policies and the recent introduction of bond notes.
Source: Scrap Indigenisation Act: ZCTU – NewsDay Zimbabwe December 19, 2016
BY MTHANDAZO NYONI
In an interview with NewsDay on Friday, ZCTU secretary-general, Japhet Moyo, said policies such as the Indigenisation Act continue to haunt Zimbabwe and because of that, the future looks gloomier than ever.
He said the introduction of bond notes would spell doom for the country next year.
“Early next year, we are predicting that we will be having empty shelves in our shops due to these bond notes. We, therefore, foresee a gloomy 2017 for now,” he said.
The government recently introduced bond notes in small denominations of $2 and $5 to ease the cash crisis.
But analysts have described the surrogate currency as a threat to the sustainability of the financial sector, as Zimbabweans had lost confidence in decisions made by the banking sector following introduction of bearer cheques almost a decade ago.
Moyo said the Indigenisation Act should be scrapped or revised, as it was chasing away potential investors.
Commenting on the year 2016, Moyo said the year was hard for the majority of the people.
“We witnessed a lot of job losses and company closures that went unabated in 2016. The numbers were going up. Our agriculture sector did not do well in 2016 and it was very bad,” he said.
Moyo said, on average, 200 workers were losing their jobs every month in 2016.
He said the figures, however, went down in the last two months but not because the companies were doing well, but because there was no one to retrench. In October, he said they did not record any company closure.
Moyo said the situation was further exacerbated by the July 2015 ruling that allowed employers to retrench workers on three months’ notice. The ruling left thousands of workers jobless.
He, however, said things looked brighter in the agriculture sector due to good rainfall that the country was receiving. Moyo pleaded with the government to complement that with sound policies
Zimbabwe’s economy is facing several challenges, including a debilitating liquidity crunch, low capacity utilisation and lack of cheap funding, among other issues.
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