Zimbabwe must sort out its political problems if it hopes to meet SADC’s regional economic integration targets, Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni warned on Monday.
He was addressing journalists in Cape Town after a meeting between Southern African Development Community central banks and representatives of the European Central Bank.
”We did not provide any advice to anybody, except to say that good macro-economic management does also rely on a good political environment to be able to operate,” he said in reply to a question on Zimbabwe.
He said all SADC member states were expected to adhere to the goals set for the region, including a SADC customs union by 2010, and single-digit inflation rates by 2008.
Zimbabwe’s inflation rate currently stands at 300%. If it became clear that ”one country or another” was not adhering to what had been agreed and signed, then remedial measures would have to be taken.
”There’s a stage where sisterhood and brotherhood comes to an end, and we have to restore our relationship in court.
”Because these agreements would be in the form of legal agreements that are binding. Failure to implement a legal agreement is usually resolved by going to the courts.”
Mboweni said a surveillance mechanism needed to be set up soon to monitor how individual countries were doing in their progress towards the assessment dates.
He said Angola, with a 45% inflation rate, had just come out of a long and bitter civil war, while Zimbabwe had its own political problems that it needed to resolve.
These problems were impacting ”too much” on the Zimbabwean economy.
However the two countries were ”outlying cases”, and other countries, including South Africa, Tanzania, Botswana and Lesotho, were doing well in meeting the integration targets.
With headline inflation of only 1,4%, he joked, South Africa would be able to apply for membership of the European Central Bank.
He hoped that soon many SADC countries would publicly set inflation targets. – Sapa