Impact of Agricultural Production on Economic Growth in Zimbabwe

Abstract

To achieve inclusive growth, and poverty and inequality reduction, African
countries should enhance labour-intensive agricultural production due to
their abundance of natural resources and labour. In this paper, we examine
the impact of agriculture on the economic growth of Zimbabwe using
the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model employing data covering
the period 1970 to 2019. The results show that agricultural production
has a significant positive impact on economic growth in the short run while
showing no impact on economic growth in the long run.Additionally, the
study confirms that inflation, government expenditure and gross fixed capital
formation have a positive impact on economic growth in both the long
run and short run. Although the agricultural sector plays a salient role in
the early stages of economic development, it is, however, not able to maintain
sustainable economic growth over a long period in Zimbabwe. Additional
macro-economic policy levers are required to compliment agricultural
production and promote sustainable economic growth.