The government in Zimbabwe only has 217 dollars in its treasury, after paying the wages of the employees in the public sector, Finance minister Tendai Biti said, quoted by AFP. "The government's finances are in a state of paralysis at the moment. We are failing in reaching our proposed targets", he said in front of the journalists, whom he told some of them may be better off financially than the government he works for.
The statements of the official come shortly after the representatives of the Electoral Commission have announced that they have spent 192 million dollars on organizing the presidential elections and the referendum for the amendment of the Constitution. The former event will require 107 million dollars, whereas for the latter 85 million dollars are needed.
Tendai Biti said that the government does not have the necessary funds, and it will ask for the help of the international community to get them. "We will ask the international community to help, but it is important that the government do something as well", the Zimbabwe finance minister said.
The presidential elections scheduled for this year are set to end the alliance between president Robert Mugabe and prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai, formed in 2009. The two were forced to accept the tense partnership after last year's elections, the outcome of which led to violent protests, which even resulted in several deaths.
Zimbabwe's economy saw an accelerated growth after the country gained its independence in 1980, which, however, stopped in 1997, when Robert Mugabe relented to the pressure from war veterans, who asked for their pensions to be increased. The seizure of the farms owned by the white citizens of the country, starting in 2000, caused a chaos in the agricultural sector, which caused the GDP to fall by half. In 2008, the hyperinflation of 231,000,000% heavily devalued t
