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The dramatic and highly detailed statistics from ZimStat on gross domestic product last year and published recently show that the first year of Covid-19 hit the country hard, although there were still distortions in our economy being sorted out by the Second Republic, and that while recovery was good last year there was still a lot of ground to make up.

The headline figures of a 7,8 percent decline in 2020 and an 8,5 percent rise in GDP last year tell only part of the story. Zimbabwe came through the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic in fairly good shape and in some very critical areas, such as agriculture, mining and financial services actually managed to make good progress.

In particular agriculture, forestry and fisheries, and this sector is dominated by the farmers, shows that the heavy stress on that sector at the start of the Second Republic was critical in not only minimising the decline of 2020 and accelerating the recovery last year, but also in getting the largest block of Zimbabweans through the pandemic with minimum suffering.

Even with drought in the 2019-2020 season, farming output grew 4,1 percent in 2020. This must have been a direct result of that determined effort made at the beginning of the Second Republic of sorting out the Government intervention into farming.

There was a stress on making this efficient, ensuring that corruption was eliminated or at least the corrupt starting discussing their foibles in front of a police detective, and putting the programmes into formal shape so we got results.

That particular harvest was before Pfumvudza had made its major impact. There were just under 10 000 farmers in the pilot programme in the 2019-2020 season and their results caused the launch of the huge main scheme the next season.

But that 4,1 percent growth meant that even in a bad year harvest values rose faster than population, and there was a growing degree of spreading that improvement. So average farm incomes, in cash and kind, grew while most of the rest of the economy was hit, and because of the greater spread real incomes must have grown as well for many. Remember if you grow your own food what you eat is income.

All that effort came to fore last year when agriculture grew 17,5 percent. Yes, decent rains helped, but even the best rainy season, and that one was on the short side although rainfall volumes were good, would have been useless if the whole Government intervention package had been deficient.

That huge growth was driven by having good systems and good rain. With good systems and bad rain there would still have been growth, 2020 showed that, just not so much.

The cleaning of the banking sector also resulted in significant growth in the financial and insurance sector, partly probably as well because interventions to help the hammered sectors was funnelled through banks and they were now strong enough and robust enough to cope.

Mining generally coped well. Despite falls in global demand and global prices, the investment efforts by Government meant we saw no decline, although growth was just 0,2 percent in 2020 but rose to 5,9 percent last year.

In other words we saw mining survived the worst of the pandemic in fairly good shape and was well positioned to resume faster growth last year. But the figures also show where we suffered significant damage besides the hospitality industry which we knew had been hit exceptionally hard.

The decline in retail in 2020 had already been factored in and at 10,1 percent it was bad but not a disaster. People still bought food during the heaviest lockdowns and were saving up to buy other things when the lockdowns were relaxed. The growth last year of 8,1 percent while not restoring wholesale and retail to pre-Covid levels still made up a lot of the losses.

The biggest surprise in the statistics was the vulnerability of our manufacturing, the huge 18,5 percent decline in 2020 and the remarkably low growth of 1,2 percent last year, leaving industry far further behind in its damage recovery than retail.

Even hospitality, with its 61 percent decline in 2020 managed to grow 38,5 percent last year, clawing back more than 60 percent of its losses and looking good for a far fuller recovery.

The manufacturing decline must have hit some sections of industry far harder. Most agro-industrial companies were not badly affected. They managed to keep processed food in our shops so the essentials were still there.

So the serious declines must have been in other parts of industry and some must have suffered far worse than an 18,5 percent decline to get that as the average. Part of this was probably the continuing movement of industry from an inefficient sector still too seriously tied to days of high protection, when anything could be sold, to the efficient and market orientated sector we needed although much of that transformation had already taken place, driven by proper import substitution where quality and pricing assumed the proper role of being the driving forces.

But perhaps there was still some areas where we were not as advanced as we should have been and the pandemic made some goods unaffordable.

Because what was seriously worrying as that industry only grew 1,2 percent last year. This was after lockdowns had eased. The far better harvest probably had little effect on the agro-industries.

They were able to use a significantly higher percentage of local raw material rather than importing, but their volumes are largely driven by consumer demand. However, other sections of industry should have improved far more as the larger rural incomes from the farming boom came into force. The fact that it did not suggests we still import far more manufactured goods across a range of consumer sectors.

Obvious ones are textiles, appliances and farm machinery, the most likely purchases by farmers with some cash in their pocket. The market was there, but someone else, somewhere else, made the goods and the took the money. This shows where a lot of our industry needs to look at the statistics. With farm output growing significantly this translates into incomes growing for the more than 60 percent of Zimbabweans in rural areas.

That is a growing market, a huge growing market, but one particularly sensitive to wanting at least adequate quality at a good price, and wanting the sort of goods that most families emerging from dire poverty want to buy. So there are opportunities for those who might have concentrated on urban middle and upper classes to think seriously about how they ride on the back of expanding rural incomes by finding out what people want to buy, what they expect from those who make the goods, and take into account that an emerging commercial farmer is probably the most price-sensitive consumer around, at least that is the experience of other countries.

For Zimbabwe to develop and its economy to grow fast the private sector, and particularly manufacturing, needs to grow, not just stay still. Agriculture and mining can create and spread wealth, and the retail sector is good enough to display and sell the goods these new people with money want.

But now factory owners need to make the stuff that people want to buy, at the price they can afford to pay. The factories will create more jobs so there are more consumers, in a useful bonus.