A turnaround is taking place, now that the country's worthless currency has been replaced, mainly by the US dollar, and once again there is food on the shelves.
Of course, growth is off a very low base - after a 14.1 percent contraction last year and a 6.9 percent contraction the previous year. But how realistic are the IMF projections? As Reuters pointed out yesterday, the IMF figures are in line with Zimbabwe's own forecasts, announced in July.
John Robertson, an independent economist in Harare, says they are off the mark: "I can't find any evidence to support it."
He said estimates of this year's crop are in fact overestimates - possibly deliberately so. And he doesn't expect next year's crop to be much better because "farmers don't have the money to start cultivating".
As a result, although the rainy season is due to start, the farmers are not ready to plant. "The commercial farms are likely to perform dismally," he said.
Robertson said an earlier IMF survey showed it "wouldn't take much to fix our infrastructure, but we haven't even started fixing it". As to the food in the shops, Robertson said: "We're importing everything, where we used to produce everything ourselves."
Zimbabwe was once known as the bread basket of Africa, but its economy has been destroyed by gross mismanagement and land grabs that turned productive farms into failing enterprises.
The economy won't come right until it receives a massive injection of capital - and that won't happen as long as Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe clings to power because both investors and donors know that it will end up in the pockets of Mugabe and his cronies.
* Business Report
