Zimbabwe has been ranked one of the 12 most advanced countries in Africa in 11th position, due to its gross income from the informal sector which sustains the country’s economy.
In a recent survey by Yahoo Finance, global economic analysts noted that Zimbabwe followed South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia, Botswana, Kenya, Egypt, Ghana, Namibia, Senegal and Tanzania.
The survey stated that Zimbabwe’s economy has been mainly boosted by the informal sector due to high rates of unemployment in the country, according to NewsDay. Said the survey:
The Republic of Zimbabwe is a landlocked South African country with a $38 billion gross domestic product (GDP). Its economy is primarily fuelled by the services sector, due to low levels of industrialization. These are economies that remain undocumented as their transactions are generally conducted outside the formal banking system, which keeps them off of the authorities’ radar.
The findings are consistent with the views of economist Edward Graham Cross (Eddie Cross) who said the informal sector “constitutes the majority of the Zimbabwean economy, and without this informal sector, our social economic situation would be much worse.”
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Statistics by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) show that Zimbabwe is the world’s second-largest informal economy, consisting of 64.1% of the economy, and second to Afghanistan.
Economist Vince Musewe, however, told NewsDay that an advanced economy cannot be fuelled by the informal sector, adding that a country’s economy should be measured by its citizens’ standards of living.