RYAN CHIGOCHE
Finance and Economic Development Minister, Mthuli Ncube, believes growth conditions for Zimbabwe’s economy have improved despite headwinds.
Government projected the economy to grow by 5.5% this year.
Despite the gloomy outlook, Ncube is hopeful mining, agriculture and tourism would provide some offset, reducing macro risks.
“When we make these projections of economic growth we take our time to analyse issues,” Ncube told Business Times.
He added: “At the moment we are trying to analyse the rainfall patterns. We have received the first round of crop assessment we are now waiting for the second round so that we have a clear picture from particular the agriculture sector which has backward and forward linkages with other sectors.”
He said a review of the economic growth would be made halfway through the year.
So far we are very pleased with the performance of other sectors the mining sector, the manufacturing sector, construction sector it’s really going well even with the opening up of the economy the hotel industry is picking up again and so is domestic tourism,” Ncube said.
Zimbabwe has experienced droughts every 10 years since 1982.
The cumulative occurrence of these droughts has culminated in the stagnation of livelihoods, which have enormously been agro-based, especially in rural areas.
The performance of agriculture is key to the performance of other sectors of the economy.
Also impeding the projected economic growth is the adverse impact of imported inflation, foreign currency shortages, power cuts and currency volatility, among others.
