The Central Bank Report Cards for 2022 are out and Zimbabwe’s Central Bank Governor John Mangudya failed. He got a D+ down from the respectable C- he got last year.To be honest that was to be expected based on his abysmal performance. The Zimbabwean dollar has been the worst currency in the world this year. When the year began the Zimbabwean dollar was trading at around US$1: $220 ZWL but the rate is now around $800 ZWL per 1 USD. It could have been worse were it not for a set of desperate measures unleashed by the Ministry of Finance back at the end of August. His problem is that the Zimbabwean government just cannot seem to stop printing money and he is just a pliant cog in a bullish machine that cares little for basic economic principles.

After a brief lull, Zimbabwe’s economy is back in crisis mode; and Governor John Mangudya and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) have their hands full dealing with hyperinflation, free-falling local currency, a chaotic forex market and a banking sector in which loan facilities are abused by business. RBZ has resorted to extreme and sometimes unorthodox measures, including July’s unprecedented rate hike from 80% to 200% to curb inflation and speculative borrowing, and the introduction of a gold coin (dubbed Mosi-oa-Tunya (“The Smoke That Thunders”) designed to mop up liquidity and store value in a country where the local currency is technically valueless. RBZ even went so far as to temporarily halt bank lending.

Central Bank Report Card’s comment on JP Mangudya’s perfomance

As already said it is probably not the Central Bank’s fault that we have runaway inflation. The government of Zimbabwe really loves printing money and the central bank governor is being punished for being complicit hence the dismal score. Investigations by the Ministry of Finance have revealed how some of the money printed is misused with shady companies owned by bigwigs charging as much as US$9 000 for a mere laptop. The Zimbabwean government hates controls and chances are if he dares to stand up to their money-printing ways he will just be replaced by another subsequent professed technocrat.

In case you are still wondering getting a D+ means the governor and his pal Henri Rabarijohn from Madagascar are at the bottom of rankings from the Middle East and Africa.