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Price control crackdown backfires as stocks dry up in supermarkets
Tichaona Sibanda, SW Radio Africa
July 30, 2007

http://www.swradioafrica.com/News300707/PriceControl300707.htm

The country's major wholesalers are now virtually empty as the current pricing crackdown by Robert Mugabe to rally support ahead of next year's elections starts to backfire as stores run dry.

Since the high-stakes gamble by the government to order businesses and retailers to slash their prices in half on 26th June, leading chain stores have run out of beer, cool drinks, and other basics such as soap, sugar, rice, flour, matches, salt, cooking oil, and margarine. Meat and maize meal are also unobtainable.

On Monday Bulawayo based businessman Eddie Cross witnessed price control officials raiding Advance Wholesalers in the city. He said he was shocked at the state of the warehouse which was virtually empty.

"You could look through the racks from one side of the warehouse to the other, there was nothing. Today (Monday) in Bulawayo Lobels are not delivering bread, as they have no diesel. Chitrins fleet is also down. Yesterday (Sunday) I saw that the doors of OK Bazaars were closed and barred in Gweru and was told that the managers are locked up inside," Cross said.

Companies that have tried to flout the price controls, after warning they can no longer cover their costs, have been slapped with heavy fines and accused of trying to topple the government. Cross added that most company executives were spending long periods of time behind bars without proper charges being laid against them

"Arrests of businesspersons continued over the weekend. A manager with Spar in Bulawayo spent the weekend in jail with 18 others in a cell designed for four people. This is an urban equivalent of farm invasions by the government," Cross said.

While the majority of Zimbabweans who have been struggling to make ends meet may be breathing sighs of relief at cheaper goods, Cross warned their joy may be short lived with stores already running out of stocks and the black market thriving as a result.

With inflation believed to be well beyond 10 000 percent and four out of five people unemployed, the crackdown on so-called profiteering has served to divert some of the blame for the economic woes away from the economic mismanagement of Zanu-PF.

Meanwhile, in yet another inflationary exercise, Mugabe says his government may have to print more money to meet the country's expenses.

The state controlled Herald newspaper reports that Mugabe made the comment to a group of local officials on Friday. He told the Zanu (PF) officials that if no money for municipal projects in cities and towns were found, he would order more to be printed.

One of the many meat queues that Zimbabweans now have to endure when there are rumours of deliveries.

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