Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan’s speech is available to read here, or to watch here.
The Government’s summary of the measures announced in the Budget is available here.
Armed riot police were out in force for a second day today as thousands of Zimbabweans mobbed banks, unable to access money or cash cheques.
On Friday, police dispersed a crowd who smashed a glass window of a building society in a desperate attempt to cash pay cheques. Bank tellers are only able to give customers 10,000 Zimbabwe dollars (about £7) due to a cash shortage created by the country’s economic crisis.
President Robert Mugabe’s government is unable to print enough currency to keep up with inflation and banks have run out of the imported paper and ink needed to print cheque books.
Zimbabwe’s economy is devastated, with unemployment at 70 percent and inflation topping 300 percent a year.
Many of the estimated 1.3 million Zimbabweans who held jobs were paid on Thursday but were still unable to access their money to pay month-end bills today.
“This is just the beginning and it is bound to get worse,” said economist John Robertson. He said the government’s plan to print more notes in higher denominations would not counter the economic collapse.
Zimbabwe is suffering acute shortages of hard currency, as well as imports such as gas, medicine and food.
Fuel shortages have crippled industry and transportation.
On the thriving black market, fuel and the staple, cornmeal, fetch five times the official price. The official exchange rate is 824 Zimbabwe dollars to the US dollar, but on the black market the American dollar buys up to 2,700 Zimbabwe dollars.
Part of the deepening economic crisis is blamed on the state programme that seized f white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to black settlers.
Foreign investment and aid has largely ended, in protest of human rights abuses and the disputed presidential elections last year that gave Mugabe another six-year term in office.
Mugabe has been president of the southern African country since its independence in 1980.
As Zimbabweans queued for several city blocks around the capital’s banks, three of the country’s most senior religious leaders met with the 79-year-old Mugabe to discuss the economic and political crisis.
“The president was fairly responsive to our vision,” said Anglican Bishop Sebastian Bakare, but would not divulge details of the meeting.
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