{"id":18957,"date":"2023-04-21T09:47:25","date_gmt":"2023-04-21T09:47:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/zimbabwe-economy-could-grow\/"},"modified":"2023-04-21T09:50:18","modified_gmt":"2023-04-21T09:50:18","slug":"zimbabwe-economy-could-grow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/zimbabwe-economy-could-grow\/","title":{"rendered":"Zimbabwe economy could grow 6% this year, finance minister says"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>HARARE (Reuters) &#8211;     Zimbabwe&#8217;s economy could grow 6% this year, better than a previous forecast for 3.8% growth, thanks to a strong performance by agriculture and easing power shortages, Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube said on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are saying 3.8% growth is an underestimate. The growth should be higher than that and close to 6%,&#8221; Ncube told an online briefing.<\/p>\n<p>In a cabinet statement this week, the government said it expected to harvest 2.3 million tonnes of maize this year, a 58% jump from the previous season driven by favourable rains.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What we mainly did this week was to recognise the strong recovery in the agricultural sector where we have seen 54% growth, at least in the grains sub-sector. We are seeing a 35% growth in the non-food sector,&#8221; Ncube said.<\/p>\n<p>The minister said improved generation at the Hwange coal plant and the Kariba hydroelectric station should help improve electricity availability.<\/p>\n<p>He downplayed the likelihood of the government overspending given this year&#8217;s general election, saying the target was still for the overall fiscal deficit to be 1.5% of gross domestic product, the same as forecast in November.<\/p>\n<p \/>\n<p> (Reporting by Nyasha Chingono; editing by Alexander Winning and Jason Neely)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/zimbabwe-economy-could-grow\/a-mam-counts-money-next-to-a-groceries-stall-at\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportEconomy\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3K0AF-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3K0AF-VIEWIMAGE\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>HARARE (Reuters) &#8211; Zimbabwe&#8217;s economy could grow 6% this year, better than a previous forecast for 3.8% growth, thanks to a strong performance by agriculture and easing power shortages, Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube said on Friday. &#8220;We are saying 3.8% growth is an underestimate. The growth should be higher than that and close to 6%,&#8221; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":18958,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1216],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-economy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportEconomy\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3K0AF-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18957"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18959,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18957\/revisions\/18959"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}