Unemployment is at a staggering 90 per cent, the currency – or lack thereof – is a global laughing stock and any money that could be raised through tourism isn’t coming though.
Welcome to Zimbabwe: the country that’s about to collapse.
Zimbabwe’s financial ruin is a foregone conclusion for many of the world’s economists
A new currency experiment by the government, spearheaded by president Robert Mugabe, 93, is backfiring.
The country can’t pay for its borrowed electricity, a cash shortage has forced people to barter to survive, and it’s managed to drive away any foreign tourists otherwise willing to spend their money there.
And while a general election will be held next year, there seems little sign of change: Mugabe’s wife Grace, 52, revealed on the weekend her plan to succeed her ageing husband as the country’s first woman president.
But as Mugabe focuses on his party’s election victory, a cash shortage has sparked panic-buying as people struggle to find patrol and basic needs, and it echoes the economic crisis of 2009 that’s still a fresh nightmare to millions of people in the debt-ridden nation.
IT’S GOING TO GET WORSE
Zimbabwe’s currency dysfunction has long been the stuff of infamy.
The government scrapped the Zimbabwe dollar in 2009, after hyperinflation peaked at an eye-watering 500,000,000,000 per cent – wiping out people’s savings and destroying businesses. At that time, a loaf of bread was more than 100 trillion Zimbabwe dollars, or 40 US cents.
