Published: 10 June 2013

Zimbabwe missed revenue targets for April by 7.3% as the economy shows signs of stagnation due to the poor performance across sectors.

Finance Minister Tendai Biti yesterday said, in a State of the Economy report for April, revenue collections for the month stood at $263 million against a target of $282.3 million reflecting a $19.3 million shortfall.

Of this amount, the bulk went to employment costs which stood at $191.1 million, "meaning that 75% of what we collect is going to employment costs," he said.

He said the decline in revenues was also reproduced in the decline in agricultural output while government still had outstanding obligations to input suppliers of fertiliser and grain deliveries by farmers amounting to $19.97 million and $1.45 million respectively.

Biti also said the total gold output for the month had gone up by 9% from 990kg to 1 081kg. He said the country's exports had declined by 14% while imports had also shown a slight decrease of 2% from $708 million to $704 million.

The annual broad money supply remained steady at $3.8 billion with demand deposits and savings deposits constituted 52% and 34$ respectively while long-term deposits were only 14%.

Meanwhile Biti says  President Mugabe should proclaim election dates because continued uncertainty over when polls would be held was negatively affecting the economy. Addressing the media on the state of the economy yesterday, Biti said most businesses had adopted a wait-and-see attitude due to uncertainty over election date.

- herald

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