What exactly would a Tembo government bring to the Malawi economy? Given his political record, Tembo is careful not to touch on his political record which is a sordid and bloody one. Instead he claims he has economic policy experience and cites his years as the Reserve Bank Governor as evidence of his competence.
But how did Tembo perform? Our research team here in the Hole has quickly looked at the figures. Tembo was governor of the central bank of
Second the economy did not perform well during this period. It is not clear what indicators Tembo is using to judge his performance. If we take the indicators usually used to evaluate central banks Tembo does not come out as such a shining performer that we can be persuaded to overlook his bloody political past (Okay he is a killer but he is a good economist) . When Tembo took over the Reserve Bank Malawi’s foreign exchange reserves were enough to cover 3 months of imports. By the time he left this had fallen to less than two months. The share of investment in GDP fell from 24 percent in 1972 to 12 percent in 1984. Between 1965 and 1971 the economy grew at the average annual rate of rate of 7.2 and while Tembo was governor of the central bank the rate fell to 4.0. Indeed much of the decline that was to result in two decades of stagnation started precisely during the period when he was at the Reserve Bank. As for the Kwacha the parallel market exchange of the dollar to the Kwacha was 1.40 Kwacha’s per dollar in 1.40 in 1978 and the Kwacha fell to 2.2 kwachas per dollar. By entertaining every whim of Dr. Banda the Reserve Bank contributed to the deep crisis that produced two decades of economic decline. All this may not be entirely his fault but he has no right to claim the right to rule
Tembo¨s performnace may look good in light of the disastrous Muluzi performance but it cannot be used to argue that he would be a better castodian of the Malawi economy than the Bingu-Gondwe team.
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