Biti’s lies and exaggerations

CLAIM: 79% our people are living in extreme poverty, surviving on less than US$1.25 a day.

VERDICT: EXAGGERATED

A World Bank report released in June 2021 put the number of extremely poor Zimbabweans at 7.9 million, or 49% of the population.

“In 2020, the pandemic and its impacts disrupted livelihoods, especially in urban areas, and added 1.3 million Zimbabweans to the extreme poor. Estimates suggest the number of extreme poor reached 7.9 million—almost 49 percent of the population,” the report reads.

This was an increase from 38% reported by the official Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (Zimstat) in its 2019 Poverty, Income Consumption and Expenditure Survey (PICES).

Zimstat conducts the PICES survey every five years and the next one was due in 2022. However, the exceptional circumstances of 2019 compelled the agency, which partners World Bank technical staff on the surveys, to conduct one that year following Zimbabwe’s devastating drought and an inflation spike triggered by the reintroduction of a local currency.

Zimstat simulations for the subsequent period showed extreme poverty levels to have risen to 52% by the end of 2019, in line with the World Bank estimates for 2020.

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