Editorial Comment: The cookie is crumbling

NEWS that listed Zimbabwean companies will, henceforth, start presenting their financial statements using the Financial Reporting in Hyperinflationary Economies Standard can only mean one thing: The cookie is crumbling, and it would be foolhardy for the country’s fiscal authorities to state otherwise.

Even in the absence of yearly inflation data, after the monetary authorities curiously suspended its publication in June, companies have increasingly been finding it difficult to craft financial statements, and that the Public Accounts and Auditors Board (PAAB) has finally decided to bite the bullet and let the cat out of the bag, effectively puts Finance minister, Mthuli Ncube and his colleagues on the spot.

Given what Ncube and colleagues have been telling us about the direction in which this economy is moving, the PAAB decision is a monumental embarrassment and an indictment on the much-vaunted so-called austerity for prosperity measures.

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