Zimbabwe Economy - 2005

Economy - overview:
The government of Zimbabwe faces a wide variety of difficult economic problems as it struggles with an unsustainable fiscal deficit, an overvalued exchange rate, soaring inflation, and bare shelves. Its 1998-2002 involvement in the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, drained hundreds of millions of dollars from the economy. Badly needed support from the IMF has been suspended because of the country's failure to meet budgetary goals. Inflation rose from an annual rate of 32% in 1998 to 133% at the end of 2004, while the exchange rate fell from 24 Zimbabwean dollars per US dollar to 6,200 in the same time period. The government's land reform program, characterized by chaos and violence, has badly damaged the commercial farming sector, the traditional source of exports and foreign exchange and the provider of 400,000 jobs.

GDP:
purchasing power parity - $24.37 billion (2004 est.)

GDP - real growth rate:
-8.2% (2004 est.)

GDP - per capita:
purchasing power parity - $1,900 (2004 est.)

GDP - composition by sector:
agriculture: 18.1%
industry: 24.3%
services: 57.7% (2004 est.)

Labor force:
4.23 million (2004 est.)

Labor force - by occupation:
agriculture 66%, industry 10%, services 24% (1996)

Unemployment rate:
70% (2002 est.)

Population below poverty line:
70% (2002 est.)

Household income or consumption by percentage share:
lowest 10%: 1.97%
highest 10%: 40.42% (1995)

Distribution of family income - Gini index:
50.1 (1995)

Inflation rate (consumer prices):
133% (2004 est.)

Investment (gross fixed):
9.9% of GDP (2004 est.)

Budget:
revenues: $1.325 billion
expenditures: $1.593 billion, including capital expenditures of NA (2004 est.)

Public debt:
52.3% of GDP (2004 est.)

Agriculture - products:
corn, cotton, tobacco, wheat, coffee, sugarcane, peanuts; sheep, goats, pigs

Industries:
mining (coal, gold, platinum, copper, nickel, tin, clay, numerous metallic and nonmetallic ores), steel, wood products, cement, chemicals, fertilizer, clothing and footwear, foodstuffs, beverages

Industrial production growth rate:
-7.8% (2004 est.)

Electricity - production:
8.839 billion kWh (2002)

Electricity - consumption:
11.22 billion kWh (2002)

Electricity - exports:
0 kWh (2002)

Electricity - imports:
3 billion kWh (2002)

Oil - production:
0 bbl/day (2001 est.)

Oil - consumption:
23,000 bbl/day (2001 est.)

Oil - exports:
NA

Oil - imports:
NA

Current account balance:
$-230.3 million (2004 est.)

Exports:
$1.409 billion f.o.b. (2004 est.)

Exports - commodities:
cotton, tobacco, gold, ferroalloys, textiles/clothing

Exports - partners:
South Africa 11.9%, Zambia 6.3%, China 3.4% (2004)

Imports:
$1.599 billion f.o.b. (2004 est.)

Imports - commodities:
machinery and transport equipment, other manufactures, chemicals, fuels

Imports - partners:
South Africa 47.2%, Democratic Republic of the Congo 6.2%, China 4.4% (2004)

Reserves of foreign exchange and gold:
$57 million (2004 est.)

Debt - external:
$4.086 billion (2004 est.)

Economic aid - recipient:
$178 million; note - the EU and the US provide food aid on humanitarian grounds (2000 est.)

Currency (code):
Zimbabwean dollar (ZWD)

Exchange rates:
Zimbabwean dollars per US dollar - 4,303.28 (2004), 697.424 (2003), 55.036 (2002), 55.052 (2001), 44.418 (2000)
note: these are official exchange rates, non-official rates vary significantly