Zimbabwe's information minister yesterday accused some western powers of sabotaging the southern African country's economy in a bid to unseat President Robert Mugabe's government.

Jonathan Moyo told a high level meeting on the country's economic crisis that the countries wanted Mugabe to leave power over his controversial land reforms, during which a minority group of whites lost land to thousands of landless blacks.

"Britain, America, Australia... and New Zealand are truly and seriously committed to regime change, they seek a regime change in Zimbabwe," he said.

"They are pursuing it through acts of economic sabotage and they use weapons of mass deception, (under the cover of) instruments of democracy, human rights rule of law, good governance, to sound reasonable," Moyo said.

"They steal our foreign currency earnings, they attack even our own currency to the point of saying it's scarce, to blame the government, to seek regime change, and they drive the parallel market," he told top government, economic and civic officials seeking solutions to the economic malaise.

Zimbabwe is grappling with a record economic problems characterised by hyperinflation at 455% and shortages of most basics, among them grains and fuel.

The economic problems have been widely blamed on Mugabe's government.

Said Moyo: "This country is under de facto economic sanctions".

Mugabe and his closest associates have been placed under targetted sanctions, which include travel bans to the European Union and the US on allegations of right abuses.

Zimbabwe has repeatedly accused Britain, the former colonial power of bankrolling the leading opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Moyo accused government workers of failing to implement government policies because of bureaucracy and ideological differences.

"Right now there is in our country a frenzy against government authority, against policy. The state machinery has been weakened," he said.

"That is why we have a flourishing parallel (black) market, that is why we have hyperinflation .. the instruments for intervention are not there," he admitted.

The two-day conference convened by government and business heard on Wednesday that Zimbabwe's economy was being undermined by contradictory and ineffectual government policies, corruption, greed and the country's negative image abroad. – Sapa-AFP.