HARARE – New monetary measures including a new currency announced by Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor Gideon Gono on Wednesday will do little to revive the country’s comatose economy, analysts told ZimOnline.

Gono, tasked by President Robert Mugabe to lead efforts to turn around Zimbabwe’s economy, announced that he would on August 1 introduce new currency as well slash 10 zeroes from all monetary values.

While acknowledging that the removal of zeros from all monetary values would be of great convenience to the public, economists said Gono’s new measure fell far shot of the full package of wide-sweeping political and economic reforms required to resuscitate an economy that has been in freefall since 2000.

Harare based economist Luxon Zembe said introducing new currency in an environment of hyperinflation such as that obtaining in Zimbabwe was “not desirable”.

He said: “You cannot change the currency where government expenditure continues to go up, capacity utilization is still at its lowest, where we have little or no foreign direct investment, no balance of payment support and a stable exchange rate and without the normalization of international relations.

“These issues are still not solved and can only be solved by addressing the political situation first.”

The new currency will be easily by inflation which at more than two million percent is the highest in the world, according to Zembe.

The slashing of zeroes would only serve to help financial systems that were being clogged by the zeros, he added.

Another economist, John Robertson, said the only viable solution to Zimbabwe’s currency and wider economic problems was to implement measures to boost production.

“The solution lies in addressing issues of scarcity of commodities, of foreign exchange,” said Robertson.

Zimbabwe is in the grip of an economic crisis that Mugabe blames on sanctions imposed by Western countries in a bid to end his iron grip on power.

However, critics blame the economic meltdown on repression and wrong polices by Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since the country’s 1980n independence from Britain. – ZimOnline.