The forecast, made in the latest IMF World Economic Outlook for October 2016, would see Zimbabwe recording its first gross domestic product contraction since 2008, when the economy shrank by 16.5 percent at the height of a hyperinflation crisis.

Zimbabwe′s economy grew by an average 10.35 percent between 2009 and 2012 after dollarisation and under a power-sharing government set up by long-ruling President Robert Mugabe and the opposition.