The state of Zimbabwe only has 217 dollars left in its account

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 the national currency and increased poverty.

Adopting the American dollar and the South African rand as currencies, in 2009, brought back stability to some extent, and the economy is expected to grow 5% this year. Zimbabwe's budget for 2013 is 3.8 billion dollars. In spite of all this, the Organization of the United Nations (UN) expects the African country to require a minimum of 131 million dollars in economic aid this year, particularly for buying food, due to a very bad harvest, which puts 1.7 million people at risk of starvation.

"There have been claims that the economic situation is improving, but as ordinary citizens, we are not seeing that", said McDonald Lewanika, the head of the non-governmental organization "Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition", who went on to say: "In the absence of new foreign direct investments and as some companies are leaving the country due to the uncertainty, I am wondering where these claims are coming from". He says that the statements of the Minister of Finance are telling for the difficult situation the country is in. "The statements show that the economy are in intensive care. We have a very small economy, so that the room which minister Biti has to get the resources he needs is limited. And we should be asking where certain revenues are going", McDonald Lewanika says. The authorities of Zimbabwe said that diamond sales have amounted to 685 billion dollars last year.

The representatives of the Movement for Democratic Change (MSC), the party led by PM Morgan Tsvangirai, claim that the revenues from the sale of diamonds are used by Robert Mugabe's party, the National African Union of Zimbabwe-The Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), to support his electoral campaign. Tendai Biti, who is also the secretary general of the MSC, said that the state treasury only received 4 billion from the sales of diamonds in 2012.

The organization "Africa Canada Partnership" announced in November that at least 2 billion dollars originating from the sale of gems from the Marange deposits, were stolen by friends of Robert Mugabe, foreign traders and traffickers, in what they called "probably the biggest robbery the world has seen since Cecil Rhodes (ed. note: the founder of the < De Beers > company, the world's largest maker of diamonds in the world and of Rhodesia, the predecessor of Zambia and Zimbabwe)".

The referendum for the approval of a new Constitution is scheduled for the month of March. After its completion, Robert Mugabe is expected to announce the date of the elections. Even though the new Constitution is set to reduce the functions of the president and to bolster those of the Government and the Parliament, as well as limit the number of terms a president can have to two and the duration of each term to five years, the decision would not apply retroactively, which would allow Robert Mugabe to lead the country for ten more years.