Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister Tendai Biti Friday revised up this year’s economic growth to 8.1 percent, from the earlier projected 7.7 percent, citing strong performance by the agricul tural sector.
This is the third time he has revised the country’s projected economic growth th is year.
In the second quarter, he predicted the economy would grow at a slower rate of 5 .4 percent, down from 7.7 percent forecast last year.
”In the mid-term budget, we announced that we had revised our projected growth rate from 7.7 percent to 5.4 percent in July 2010 because of slow performance of the economy in the first half of the year. I am pleased t o advise a major rebound in the second half of the year,” Biti said.
”Growth projections for December 2010 would be 8.1 percent because of a serious rebound in agriculture,” he said, singling out strong tobacco production which almost doubled to 120 million kilogrammes this year.
The country, however, is still recovering from a decade-long recession in which at one time it had the highest inflation in the world at 500 billion percent.
Economists said it would take several years of strong growth for the economy to fully recover from the crisis.
