Zimbabwe’s business leaders have expressed a lack of confidence in the country’s economy, according to a new survey released by the CEO Africa Roundtable.
The survey, which polled 257 chief executive officers and senior executives from various sectors, gave a score of -40.2 for the business confidence index (BCI) in the third quarter of 2023. This means that more than 40 percent of the respondents were pessimistic about the current state of the economy and its future direction.
The BCI is a measure of the expectations and sentiments of business decision-makers regarding the economic performance of the country. A positive score indicates optimism, while a negative score indicates pessimism.
The low BCI score reflects the multiple challenges that Zimbabwe faces, such as exchange rate volatility, inflation, financial instability, regulatory uncertainty, and political instability. These factors have eroded the profitability and competitiveness of businesses, as well as their ability to invest and create jobs.
Based on a report by Newsday Zimbabwe, the survey also showed that the majority of the respondents were dissatisfied with the government’s policies and performance, especially in the areas of fiscal management, monetary policy, corruption, and governance.
The CEO Africa Roundtable, a platform for dialogue and collaboration among business leaders in Africa, said that the BCI serves as an essential tool for understanding market dynamics, assessing economic stability, and identifying key trends that shape business decision-making.
The organization’s chair, Oswell Binha, said that the BCI also represents an opportunity for close interaction between policy developers and policy implementers, removing the trust gap that remains a hindrance to national competitiveness and development.
He urged the policymakers, investors, and corporates to harness the BCI’s outcomes as a source of real-time data, comparative analysis, and predictive analytics.
“We strongly believe that this tool shall hyperbolically eradicate stakeholder suspicion, exaggeration, and rhetoric, destructive culture militating against our collective intention of railroading NDS (National Development Strategy) 1 and 2 towards a prosperous upper-middle-income economy by 2030,” he said.
The NDS 1 and 2 are the government’s economic blueprints that aim to achieve a gross domestic product (GDP) of US$65 billion and a per capita income of US$3,500 by 2030.
However, the survey results suggest that the business community is skeptical about the feasibility and implementation of these plans, given the current economic situation and the lack of policy coherence and consistency.
The CEO Africa Roundtable said that it will continue to conduct the BCI survey on a quarterly basis to monitor the changes and trends in the business environment and provide feedback and recommendations to the relevant stakeholders.
The organization also called for more dialogue and collaboration among the public and private sectors, as well as the civil society and the international community, to address the economic challenges and opportunities that Zimbabwe faces.
The survey report came hard on the heels of the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce’s 2023 Annual State of the Industry and Commerce Survey, which showed that 38 percent of those surveyed saw an economic improvement.
The two surveys used different methodologies and indicators, and therefore may not be directly comparable.
Despite the gloomy outlook, some business leaders remain hopeful that the situation will improve in the near future, as the country recovers from the effects of the pandemic and the drought, and as the government implements reforms and engages with the international community.
