Online Reporter
Tawanda Musarurwa
Business Reporter
THE country’s economy grew 6,8 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2026, keeping output ahead of Treasury’s 5 percent growth assumption for the year, even as momentum cooled sharply from the final quarter of 2025, the latest national accounts data show.
According to the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZimStat)’s first quarter 2026 gross domestic product (GDP) numbers released on Thursday, the country’s GDP at current prices stood at ZiG394,5 billion in the first quarter, down from ZiG427,2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025.
In real terms, at constant 2025 prices, output eased to ZiG388,3 billion from ZiG401,6 billion, a quarter-on-quarter contraction of 3,3 percent, the sharpest quarterly pullback since the rebased GDP series began publishing.
The two measures tell different stories depending on the comparison. Against the same quarter a year ago, the economy is still expanding briskly.
Against the quarter before, it went into reverse. Much of that reversal can be attributed to the mining sector.
Mining and quarrying output fell 27 percent quarter-on-quarter and was down 4,9 percent year-on-year, a sharp reversal for an industry the 2026 National Budget had pencilled in as the single largest driver of growth for the year, and one central to National Development Strategy 2
(NDS2)’s push for value addition and beneficiation under its economic transformation pillar.
The pullback follows an unusually high base, after mining output had jumped 46,4 percent quarter-on-quarter in the second quarter of 2025, so part of the fall reflects that earlier spike unwinding rather than a fresh shock.
Agriculture told the opposite story. Output from farming, fishing and forestry grew 6,4 percent quarter-on-quarter and 15,7 percent year-on-year, extending its recovery from the 2023/24 El Nino drought.
That resilience sits comfortably with NDS2’s commitment to ring-fence food and nutrition security through irrigation and climate-proofed farming, though it is also a reminder that agriculture’s fortunes remain tied to the weather in ways the strategy’s beneficiation agenda is designed to soften over time.
Manufacturing remained the backbone of the economy, contributing 17,1 percent of constant-price GDP, more than mining’s 11,7 percent or wholesale and retail trade’s 10,9 percent, while growing a modest 1,6 percent quarter-on-quarter and 2 percent year-on-year.
That share already sits close to NDS2’s 2030 ambition of lifting manufacturing value addition to 18 percent of GDP, suggesting the industrialisation goal may prove less of a stretch than the strategy’s job-creation and export targets.
Elsewhere, the picture was mixed. Real estate, health, financial services and wholesale and retail trade all posted modest quarterly gains of around 1,5 to 2,3 percent.
Accommodation and food services, water supply, transport, information and communication, professional services and public administration all pulled back, with water supply the hardest hit, down 8,2 percent on the quarter.
One outlier is worth flagging. Net taxes on products jumped 41,2 percent year-on-year and 3,3 percent quarter-on-quarter, even as broader output slowed, a sign of firmer VAT (value-added tax) and import-duty collection that speaks to NDS2’s domestic resource mobilisation ambitions, even if it adds pressure on households and firms already navigating a soft patch.
Taken together, the first quarter leaves Zimbabwe’s economy still running ahead of this year’s budget assumption, but the mining slump is a reminder that the beneficiation-led diversification NDS2 is banking on to sustain growth toward upper-middle-income status by 2030 is not yet showing up consistently across the sectors meant to carry it.
While agriculture and manufacturing are doing the heavy lifting for now; mining, the sector Treasury expected to lead 2026, will need to find its footing again if the full-year outlook is to hold.
