llow - mineral wealth, red -
blood shed to achieve independence, and black stands for the native
people

Economy Zimbabwe

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 drained hundreds of millions of dollars from
the economy. 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, turning Zimbabwe into a net importer of
food products. Badly needed support from the IMF has been suspended
because of the government's arrears on past loans, which it began
repaying in 2005. The official annual inflation rate rose from 32%
in 1998, to 133% in 2004, 585% in 2005, and approached 1000% in
2006, although private sector estimates put the figure much higher.
Meanwhile, the official exchange rate fell from approximately 1
(revalued) Zimbabwean dollar per US dollar in 2003 to 250 per US
dollar in August 2006.

GDP (purchasing power parity):
$25.05 billion (2006 est.)

GDP (official exchange rate):
$3.146 billion (2006 est.)

GDP - real growth rate:
-4.4% (2006 est.)

GDP - per capita (PPP):
$2,000 (2006 est.)

GDP - composition by sector:
agriculture: 17.7%
industry: 22.9%
services: 59.4% (2006 est.)

Labor force:
3.958 million (2006 est.)

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

Unemployment rate:
80% (2005 est.)

Population below poverty line:
80% (2004 est.)

Household income or consumption by percentage share:
lowest 10%: 2%
highest 10%: 40.4% (1995)

Distribution of family income - Gini index:
56.8 (2003)

Inflation rate (consumer prices):
976.4% official data; private sector estimates are much higher
(2006 est.)

Investment (gross fixed):
16.1% of GDP (2006 est.)

Budget:
revenues: $1.411 billion
expenditures: $1.924 billion; including capital expenditures of $NA
(2006 est.)

Public debt:
108.4% of GDP (2006 est.)

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

Industries:
mining (coal, gold, plat