(SomaliNet) Zimbabwe's Finance Minister, Herbert Murerwa, has foretold the growth of Zimbabwe’s economy by 0.5%-1%. He also expects Zimbabwe’s inflation to fall by 350%. Murerwa attributes the expected growth to "good weather, stabilising of commodity prices, improved mineral deposits and growing number of tourist arrivals.” According to him, Zimbabwe's agriculture sector will grow by 6.4% while the mining sector will grow by 4.9%. However, analysts say that Murerwa is being too optimistic. "The budget is still very shy to deal with issues affecting the economy such as high unemployment, foreign currency problems and inflation," Calisto Jokonya, president of Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) said. ”He is projecting a real growth rate of between 0,5 to one percent in 2007 premised on the anticipated improved perfomance of the mining and agriculture sectors which are expected to grow by 9,4 percent and 4,9 percent in 2007. It is interesting to note that the original projection for agriculture was 23 percent and this has been revised substantially downwards to 6,4 percent," Best Doroh, an economist with ZB financial holdings commented, adding that Murerwa was being “overly optimistic.”
Murerwa made these comments during the presentation of Zimbabwe’s budget. According to columnist, Bloch, the budget “had a lot of words which mean nothing."