Commodity price boom to spur Zim

HARARE – Finance and Economic Development Minister Professor Mthuli Ncube is confident Zimbabwe will meet its 2021 economic growth target of 7.4 percent driven by agriculture recovery and commodity price boom.

This comes as Zimbabwe intends to import up to 7.5 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines in pursuance of national herd immunity, which is critical if the Government is to open up all economic sectors more freely.

The country has witnessed a rise in positive cases over the past few weeks, prompting Government to announce and revert to a stricter level four national lockdown in order to stem the spread of the respiratory disease. Ncube said this during a webinar meeting with the Insurance and Pensions Commission (IPEC), stating that Government was pleased with the state the economy in terms of its growth trajectory.

“As Government we are quite pleased in terms of the economic trajectory, we are in recovery, we should expect growth of just over seven percent. Inflation is falling year on year, month on month bumps along, but the trend is downward,” he said.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, in their recent updates, projected that Zimbabwe’s economy will expand by six percent and 3.9 percent this year if the right policies are implemented. The country registered an economic recession last year on the back of drought and the negative impact of the Covid-19 global pandemic that caused global shutdown of economies worldwide, including in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe’s annual inflation rate fell to 106.6 percent in June 2021, from 161.9, percent in May, and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) has projected the rate to fall below 55 percent this month and 25 percent by December.– THE HERALD, Zimbabwe.