Zaire STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE ECONOMY
Gross Domestic Product
Woman selling food at a Kinshasa market
Courtesy Sandy Beach
Central Market, Kinshasa
Courtesy Zaire National Tourism Office
Zairian and other official statistics on the
composition and
growth of GDP should be taken as approximations at best,
in
particular given the chaotic nature of the economy and
society in
the early 1990s. Nevertheless, some basic trends can be
observed.
The Zairian economy grew slowly throughout most of the
1980s
(except for 1982) but declined sharply beginning in 1989.
Real GDP
growth in 1980 was registered as 2.4 percent. The rate
increased to
2.9 percent in 1981, but dropped sharply to -3.0 percent
in 1982,
a year of decline in the price of copper. Thereafter, it
increased
once again and sustained positive real growth rates of 1.3
percent
in 1983, 2.7 percent in 1984, 2.5 percent in 1985, 2.7
percent in
1986 and 1987, and 0.5 percent in 1988. In 1989, however,
the
growth rate fell to -1.3 percent and continued its decline
with
negative growth rates of -2.6 percent in 1990, -7.3
percent in
1991, and -8.0 percent in 1992.
Zaire's poor economic performance has had a severe
impact on
the populace's standard of living. Even in years of modest
GDP
growth, economic growth was outpaced by the nation's very
high
population growth rate, which has been estimated at over 3
percent
per year. As a result, per capita GDP has often fallen, or
risen
only slightly, even in years of improved economic
performance. In
terms of per capita GDP, mineral-rich Zaire found itself
among the
desperately poor African nations.
Nevertheless, although living conditions and purchasing
power
for the average peasant and city dweller are indeed
meager, and for
many people desperately low, official estimates of per
capita
income indicate a much lower standard of living than has
actually
been the case, especially prior to 1992. Many Zairians eke
out a
living through subsistence agriculture and barter and
informal
trade in a range of goods and services that show up
nowhere in
official government or donor country statistics. This
energetic
informal economy is often described by the apocryphal
article
fifteen of the first postindependence constitution, "fend
for
yourself"
(see The
Informal Economy
, this ch.).
The sectoral composition of GDP has changed
substantially since
independence because of a drop in the real value of
mineral
production and because of the chronic weakness of other
sectors,
such as transportation and manufacturing, which the
government has
neglected. According to estimates by the government's
Ministry of
National Economy and Industry, agriculture accounted for
22 percent
of GDP in 1970, industry for 8 percent, mining and
metallurgy for
22 percent, and services for 48 percent. By contrast with
the rest
of sub-Saharan Africa, where agriculture lost ground to
other
sectors, Zairian agriculture's share of GDP had risen to
32 percent
by the late 1980s, with industry dropping to about 2
percent,
mining and metallurgy rising to 24 percent (but then
dropping to 17
percent by 1990), and services and other sectors falling
to about
42 percent. The increased contribution of agriculture to
the GDP
despite the fall in agricultural output in staples and
cash crops
is a vivid indication of the overall weakness of the
economy. The
increased importance of the mining and metallurgy sector
was caused
principally by the success of the legalization of the
artisanal
(panning) diamond market in 1983 and a substantial
increase in
cobalt production. The surprisingly large service sector
is
generally attributed to a bloated and grossly inefficient
public
sector and the fact that people receiving government
pensions were
included in this figure.
In a regional division of GDP, it is not surprising
that Shaba
accounted for 30 percent of the nation's total and
Kinshasa for
another 20 percent. The remainder was divided fairly
evenly among
the other regions.
Data as of December 1993
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