IMPACT OF INFLATION ON IMPORT OF MAIZE

Impact of Inflation on Import of Maize/Food into Zimbabwe

Table of Content

CHAPTER-I: INTRODUCTION3

Purpose of the Study5

CHAPTER-II: LITERATURE REVIEW6

The Political Economy of the Zimbabwean State16

Impacts of Inflation on Food/Maize19

CHAPTER-III: METHODOLOGY22

CHAPTER-IV: FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS27

The Humanitarian Crisis27

Urban Food Security29

Enough Food30

HIV in Zimbabwe34

Care Provision in a Constrained Environment37

Panning for Gold40

CHAPTER-V: CONCLUSIONS43

Zimbabwe's Lessons44

Recommendations45

REFERENCES57

CHAPTER-I: INTRODUCTION

The Zimbabwean economy is in crisis. The budget deficit for 2002 was estimated to be 17.7% of gross domestic product (GDP). The economy may have contracted by 7.5% in 2001. Inflation has skyrocketed and social indicators are deteriorating.Real incomes per head have fallen 23% in the last five years. Zimbabwean society has become increasingly wracked with instability, authoritarianism and brutality; although these trends were particularly acute during the run-up to the March 2002 elections, they have scarcely abated in the ensuing months. How has this situation come about, in what was, until recently, one of Africa's most stable and prosperous societies?

Abrahamsen (2000) mentions some analysts contend that Zimbabwe's current politico-economic crisis revolves around the land question, the dimensions of which have been well documented. However, whereas disparities in land ownership and distribution unquestionably pose long-term structural problems for Zimbabwe, this paper argues that the immediate origins of the contemporary crisis lie in the precipitous decline in the urban-industrial sector. Indeed, "a survey of 18,000 rural and urban households in 1995 found that only one percent of respondents wanted land, only two percent thought redistributing land could resolve poverty, and most wanted jobs and better salaries." Notwithstanding the possibility that these surveys may underestimate demand for land reform, the economic and political crisis engulfing the country from the mid-1990s onwards was primarily the result of the deindustrializing effects of World Bank/International Monetary Fund (IMF) structural adjustment policies, combined with the absence of a competitive electoral system (Abrahamsen, 2000).

Zimbabwe's Economic Structural Adjustment Program (ESAP) was inaugurated in 1991. Although the program expired in 1995, its aftereffects continue to be felt. Indeed, the emergence of meaningful political competition in Zimbabwe, in the guise of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), established only in 1999, is due partly to the impact of ESAP and the rise to prominence of the labor movement. MDC has its origins in the country's trade union movement, as it was workers who were most affected by increasing unemployment and declining real wages under ESAP. Following parliamentary elections in 2000, MDC now holds 56 seats in Parliament and represents a credible political force, although the party's success and influence is constrained by an electoral system that overwhelming favors the ruling party. The government's response to the MDC's challenge was to try to rhetorically and politically displace the economic crisis from the urban to the rural areas, where two thirds of the population continues to live, and where the long-dormant land issue still has traction. Irrespective of which party is in power, however, the resolution of Zimbabwe's economic crisis will depend, in large part, on the regeneration of the country's urban-based manufacturing sector (Abrahamsen, ...