Harare — ZIMBABWE has been commended for pioneering innovative economic policies that promote the aspirations of the people as opposed to championing the neo-liberal economic policies of the West.

A recent two-day workshop on Trade and Development Issues held in South Africa commended Zimbabwe for the leadership role it has assumed in penning and crafting home-grown and people oriented economic policies.

The Deputy Minister of Water and Infrastructural Development Cde Walter Mzembi represented the Parliament of Zimbabwe at the workshop attended by Sadc parliamentarians and civic groups.

"The workshop observed that Zimbabwe was already living ahead of its pack in Sadc in terms of fulfilling this new strategy but has been failed by the neo-liberal agenda which does not want an alternative to its policies," he said.

The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has implemented quasi-fiscal policies that have ensured the survival of Zimbabwe in the absence of loans and grants from the IMF and World Bank.

Cde Mzembi said Uganda, Swaziland and Tanzania commended Zimbabwe's innovative policies with Tanzanian MPs drawing parallels between Zimbabwe's people-centred policies and Ujamaa, the concept that informed the late former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere's social and economic development policies just after Tanzania's independence from Britain in 1961.

The legislators, Cde Mzembi said, noted that had Ujamaa been supported Tanzania would be better off today.

The workshop interrogated the concept of neo-liberalism and how it has failed Africa by creating a mindset in African economies that speaks more of capital investment, more on open markets, aid and imported expertise.

Cde Mzembi said the workshop recognised that neo-liberal policies have been the core strategy of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in dictating structural adjustment policies to Africa in return for financial support and technical expertise.

He said the workshop agreed that the key features of neo-liberalism were an unregulated market economy and trade liberalisation and abdication of Government responsibilities due to the influences of capital markets and multinationals.

"We agreed that there is need to interrogate some of the trade agreements that Africa is acceding to like the World Trade Organisation, economic partnership agreements such as the EU partnership agreements and AGOA and other structural adjustment programmes," he said.

There was need, he said, to review whether the agreements would in future benefit Africa and its people.

Cde Mzembi said the workshop emerged with an alternative to this trend of neo-liberalisation and underscored the need for Africa to take a position in light of the global economic meltdown.

He said it should be noted that the West and America are only rescuing their own economies from the meltdown and not doing anything to help African economies.

The workshop resolved that Africa should adopt people's needs driven economic policies that derive mandate from the interaction of the State and civil society as opposed to the IMF-WB-WTO and donor-led strategies.

African countries, he said, should ring-fence their resources and carry out audits of the resources with a view to forming regional economic blocs.

Cde Mzembi said African countries were encouraged to value-add their products coupled with authoring their own development plans and reaching out to partners of their choice.

"Liberalisation should be dictated by our own needs and, like China, we must liberalise at our own pace," he said.