Less than 5% of Zimbabwe’s industrialists believe the country will recover from its deepening economic crisis in the next three years, a survey showed on Wednesday.
The Southern African country is in its eighth successive year of recession, marked by the world’s highest inflation rate at above 3 700% and which has left four in five people without jobs and people struggling to feed their families.
The manufacturing sector contributes 15,5% to Zimbabwe’s gross domestic product, compared with 24% a decade ago.
It has been hit by shortages of electricity and foreign currency as well a skewed exchange rate and government price controls.
”We are in a crisis … we no longer have an industry to talk about. We have de-industrialised ourselves,” Callisto Jokonya, head of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) said at the launch of a survey on the state of the manufacturing sector.
The survey, which covered the period from 2008 to 2010, showed that among business executives in the manufacturing sector, ”the percentage of optimists [on the recovery of the economy] has now dropped to 4,8% in 2006, halving from 9% in 2005”.
Zimbabwe’s manufacturing sector was once hailed as one of the most diversified in sub-Saharan Africa outside South Africa and contributes a third of the country’s export earnings.
Output contracted by 7% in 2006 compared with a 3,2% growth in 2005, and is expected to register a 2% decline this year.
Industry Minister Obert Mpofu said the government hoped to arrest the slide by giving cheap loans to distressed companies, while the broader economic problems were being addressed through local and regional initiatives.
President Robert Mugabe denies charges that he has mismanaged the economy during his 27-year rule and accuses Western countries of sabotage to punish his government for seizing white-owned farms for blacks. — Reuters