Zimbabwe’s trade balance position keeps improving, as imports continued falling while exports grew between January and August 2020, a trend stretching from last year and good for efforts to stabilise the economy.
Dependency on imports, due to constrained local production capacity, has been one of the major structural flaws of Zimbabwe’s economy, which has created an acute shortage of US dollars thereby piling pressure on the domestic currency.
Government is, however, working on a cocktail of interventions, including boosting investment, production and productivity, giving incentives and developing value chains under the Zimbabwe National Industrial Development Policy (ZNIDP) (2019 –2023) that envisions a contribution of 30 percent to the gross domestic product (GDP) from the manufacturing sector.
Statistics from the Zimbabwe National Statistics Office (Zimstat), show that the value of imported goods and services in the period under review, declined by 3,6 percent to US$2,96 billion compared to the same period in 2019.
Over the same period, Zimbabwe exported goods and services worth about US$2,54 billion, which represents an increase of about 3,8 percent compared to the same period the prior year, bettering the trade balance.
Trade experts say the balance of trade in Zimbabwe averaged minus US$233,94 million from 1991 to 2019, reaching an all time high of US$293 million in December of 2000 and a record low of minus US$3,95 billion in December of 2009.
Given that, there was a noticeable decline in imports at a time when exports registered an increase, the trade deficit improved to about US$427,2 million in 2020, from US$719,9 million recorded over a similar period in 2019.
