Zimbabwe’s economy will expand by about 8 percent this year and growth may accelerate to more than 10 percent for the next five years, President Robert Mugabe has said.
The government’s economic program that started last year reversed a decade of contraction and the recovery is continuing, Mugabe said in a speech at an opening ceremony for an investment promotion agency today in the capital, Harare.
“At this rate, we should achieve double-digit growth between 2011 and 2015,” he said.
The southern African nation scrapped its dollar in 2009 and adopted the use of multiple currencies, resulting in inflation plummeting from 500 billion percent and for shops to start restocking shelves with products. Annual inflation was 3.6 percent in October, according to the state statistics agency.
While a new unity government between Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front party and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change helped end the recession, foreign donors haven’t committed money and investors have been slow to return. The European Union and the U.S. have maintained asset freezes and travel bans against Mugabe and some of his party’s officials, demanding more proof of their commitment to democracy and human rights.
More reforms are needed to attract investment and keep the recovery going, Tsvangirai said today. Differing opinions within the government undermined investor confidence, he said.
The expanded Zimbabwe Investment Authority will now link the investment promotion, immigration, tax, exchange control and company registration departments to cut the period it takes to register a business from about three months to five days, the government said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Nelson Banya in Harare via Johannesburg atngbanya@bloomberg.net
