Weekend Read| The Most Expensive Thing an Economy Can Lose Is Time

By Tinotenda Bhunu

HARARE – ECONOMISTS often talk about inflation, interest rates, exchange rates and fiscal deficits. These are important indicators, but they can distract us from a more fundamental question: What is an economy doing with its time?

Time is the one resource that no country can recover.

Money lost can be earned again. Infrastructure can be rebuilt. Policies can be rewritten. But years of missed investment, delayed reforms and postponed opportunities are gone forever. Nations, like businesses, pay a high price when they spend too much time standing still.

The Austrian School of Economics introduces a useful concept called time preference. Simply put, it describes how much people value having something today compared with having something in the future. A person with a high time preference wants immediate consumption and immediate rewards. Someone with a low time preference is willing to save, invest and wait because they believe tomorrow can be better than today.

Economies also display time preferences. Countries that consistently invest in infrastructure, education, research and institutions demonstrate a lower time preference. Those that focus mainly on immediate consumption or short-term political gains often sacrifice long-term prosperity. Economic development, therefore, is not only about how much money a country has, but also about how patiently it is prepared to build its future.

Economic development is not merely about wealth; it is about momentum.

Consider two countries with the same natural resources and similar populations. One spends ten years implementing reforms that encourage investment, innovation and entrepreneurship. The other spends the same decade debating reforms, reversing decisions and reacting to crises. At the end of those ten years, the gap between them is no longer explained by resources. It is explained by time.

This is why consistency matters more than perfection.

Businesses can adapt to taxes. They can adapt to regulations. They can even adapt to difficult economic conditions. What they struggle to adapt to is uncertainty. Every delayed investment decision represents time that cannot be recovered. Every entrepreneur who decides to wait another year before expanding is a reminder that confidence has a timetable.

Time also shapes capital.

Investment seeks places where the future appears more predictable than the present. Capital is patient, but it is not infinitely patient. If opportunities remain on hold for too long, investors eventually look elsewhere. They are not necessarily rejecting a country; they are choosing not to wait.

Zimbabwe provides a practical illustration of time preference. When inflation expectations are high and people are uncertain about the future, households and businesses naturally place greater value on spending or borrowing today rather than saving for tomorrow. Lenders respond by demanding higher interest rates to compensate for inflation risk and the uncertainty of waiting to be repaid. High interest rates, in turn, make it more expensive for businesses to finance new factories, machinery and expansion, slowing investment and job creation. Conversely, when confidence in the future improves, people are more willing to save, lenders require lower returns, borrowing costs decline and long-term investment becomes more attractive. Stable policies, therefore, do more than improve confidence—they reduce society’s time preference and create the conditions for sustainable economic growth.

The same principle applies to young people.

Every graduate who cannot find meaningful employment loses more than income. They lose experience, skills and professional networks. A nation that delays creating opportunities for its youth is not simply postponing growth—it is reducing the productive capacity of an entire generation.

This should concern policymakers because economic competition is no longer local. Zimbabwe is no longer competing only with its own past. It is competing with every country trying to attract the same investment, the same entrepreneurs and the same talent.

The world does not pause while we solve our domestic challenges.

That reality should inject urgency into economic decision-making. Every reform delayed has an opportunity cost. Every investment postponed affects jobs that are never created, exports that are never produced and incomes that are never earned.

The encouraging news is that momentum can be rebuilt.

History is filled with countries that transformed themselves within a generation because they recognised that time was their most valuable asset. They created institutions that rewarded enterprise, protected investment and encouraged long-term planning.

A useful example is Singapore. In the 1960s, it was a small, resource-constrained economy with significant development challenges. Rather than pursuing quick wins, policymakers invested consistently in education, infrastructure, efficient public institutions and policies that encouraged long-term private investment. Those decisions reflected a low societal time preference—a willingness to delay immediate consumption in favour of future prosperity. Decades later, the cumulative effect of those patient decisions transformed Singapore into one of the world’s most competitive economies. The lesson is that economic miracles rarely happen overnight; they are usually the result of thousands of disciplined decisions made consistently over many years.

Economic success rarely comes from dramatic announcements. More often, it comes from years of steady, predictable progress.

Perhaps that is the lesson for Zimbabwe.

The question is not whether we have the potential to grow. We do.

The question is whether we are making the most of the one resource we cannot replace.

Because in economics, as in life, the greatest cost is not always the money we lose.

Sometimes it is the time we never get back.

Tinotenda Bhunu is an economist by profession. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tinotenda-bhunu-114645208?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=android_app