Zimbabwe’s recovery impossible -CZI (22-06-07)

ver the period 2007 – 2010, argued that the country, in its eighth successive year of recession, marked by the world’s highest inflation rate of 4530% for May has left four in five people without jobs and people struggling to feed their
families, was now on the brink of collapse.
”The manufacturing sector now contributes 15,5% to Zimbabwe’s gross domestic product, compared with 24% a decade ago. The country has also been hit by shortages of electricity and foreign currency as well a skewed exchange rate and government price controls,” said the report.
CZI president, Callisto Jokonya, said business had now woken up to the reality that the country was now in a crisis.
“We are in a crisis … we no longer have an industry to talk about. We have de-industrialised ourselves,” he said, adding that the survey had also shown that that among business executives in the manufacturing sector, the percentage of optimism had now dropped to 4,8% in 2006, halving from nine percent in 2005.”
Zimbabwe’s manufacturing sector was once hailed as one of the most diversified in sub-Saharan Africa outside South Africa and contributed a third of the country’s export earnings.
Output contracted by 7% in 2006 compared to 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.