The International Monetary Fund has said that most of the African economies will deteriorate farther than they had projected.
The fund initially predicted that Zimbabwe’s economy would grow by shrink by 0.8 percent before revising the projection to 7.4% in April, and now further down to 10.4%.
In April, the IMF had predicted that Zimbabwe would record growth of 2.5% next year but now predicts that the Zimbabwe economy will recover 4.2% in 2021.
The projections are made after Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube, in a letter to the IMF in April, said Zimbabwe’s economy could fall by as much as 20% as COVID-19 worsens the economic crisis.
Turning to African economies at large, the IMF report observed that remittances which had in the past surpassed Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), will fall significantly. The report observed:
The outlook for 2020–21 is considerably worse than expected in April and subject to much uncertainty.
Across country groupings, growth is expected to fall the most in tourism-dependent and resource-intensive countries. Growth in non-resource intensive countries is expected to come to a near standstil.
The majority of African countries were staggering even before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic therefore a further decline can worsen the economic and humanitarian crisis obtaining on the continent.
More: NewzWire