FINANCE minister Tendai Biti has again threatened to act on banks he accuses of discouraging savings through wide discrepancies between lending and interest rates on depositors.

ZIMBABWE’S year-on-year inflation dropped marginally in June to 5,3%, shedding 0,8% from 6,1% in May, the Central Statistical Office (CSO) announced yesterday.

INTERNATIONAL donors could soon approve large-scale aid to Zimbabwe to help it repair broken infrastructure and rebuild its shattered economy, Deputy Prime Minister Thokozani  Khupe says.

GOVERNMENT has proposed new tax measures for chrome miners and a further increase in mining royalties for precious minerals on the back of a surge in shipment contribution from the entire sector during the first half of the year.

THE Constitution Parliamentary Committee (Copac) has refused to pay MPs who hired out Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe-loaned cars for the outreach programme, forcing the withdrawal of the vehicles from the process.

POLICE have summoned MDC-T deputy organising secretary, Morgan Komichi, for asking a top police commander to release vehicles impounded from Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s party in 2008.

FORMER Deputy Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education and Zanu PF secretary for education in the politburo, Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, has vowed to defy a government directive to shut down his private college that was blacklisted as an illegal educational institution.

DEBATE over the legitimacy of the ongoing parliament-led constitution-making process has swirled since the start of the outreach programme, a process that has been discredited by reports of intimidation, harassment of civil society monitors and coerced contributions from the public.

AS the constitution outreach programme gains momentum, analysts say the new constitution which will be put to a referendum will be determined more by political parties in the inclusive government than ordinary Zimbabweans.

ZANU PF’s hard-line stance and mistrust between President Robert Mugabe and the European Union are likely to emerge as the biggest threats to the coalition government’s efforts to re-engage the West and end close to a decade of isolation.

FRESH turmoil has hit Zanu PF in Matabeleland where Vice-President John Nkomo and Mines minister Obert Mpofu are involved in a power struggle that has sucked in regional bigwigs Jonathan Moyo, Sikhanyiso Ndlovu and Jacob Mudenda.

The party has been hit by suspensions and plots by both Nkomo and Mpofu to position their lieutenants in powerful posts in the region, in what sources said was part of a wider Zanu PF succession battle.

BUSINESSMAN Temba Mliswa, arrested three times in just over a week, is in even deeper trouble.

PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe yesterday said Zimbabwe does not need Western funding to resuscitate its comatose economy.

Mugabe’s pronouncement flew in the face of the country’s attempts to lobby for the removal of sanctions and the provision of financial assistance.
A government delegation held a meeting with the European Union in Brussels last Friday where the two agreed to intensify the re-engagement dialogue in Harare.

ZIMBABWE is working on a hybrid strategy involving a request for debt relief under the highly indebted poor country (HIPC) scheme to honour external debts and an injection of fresh financing from multi-lateral financial institutions, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said.

THE formation of the inclusive government has eased relations between Germany and Zimbabwe, but continued breaches of property rights threaten future support, a top diplomat has said.