Kelsey Walker

January 29, 2009

9:43 Pm

Inflation-Weary Zimbabwe to Allow Foreign Currencies

Since President Robert Mugabe’s governmental seizing of white-owned commercial farms, Zimbabwe’s economy has drastically dropped. Unemployment rates in current Zimbabwe have reached 94 %. More than half of the country’s population will be needing food aid in February and March of this year. Cholera has broken out killing 3,100 people and infecting 58,993 people of Zimbabwe’s populations. Also a confusion of power between MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai and President Mugabe still hinders the government’s progress toward stabilizing the economy. Because of its economical state, Zimbabwe has recently been doing business with foreign currencies such as, the U.S. dollars, the South African rand, the Botswana pula, the euro, and the British pound. This newly developed currency bidding has been enforced to try to help boost the economy due to hyperinflation of the Zimbabwean dollar. Although the currency policy will help businesses and governmental associations, ordinary Zimbabweans receiving the shorter end of the currency liberalization stick. Teachers, service workers, policemen, etc. are all still paid with the Zim dollar but they must pay for goods and services in foreign currency.
These are very hard times in the once prosperous country of Zimbabwe. Many believe that the true cause of the economical downfall was Mugabe’s shift of power when seizing the white-owned commercial farms and distributed them poor blacks. The Zimbabwean crisis is a clear example of the power and destruction in capitalism when shifts of power arise.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/WireStory?id=6756539&page=1