Corruption and economic growth in Zimbabwe: Unravelling the linkages

Corruption impedes investment and economic growth by increasing enterprises’ cost of doing business. This cost is often transferred to consumers through higher prices or lower quality of goods and services, which affect negatively the private sector’s labour market, efficiency, competition, innovation and general output. The mainimpetus of this paper is to investigate the linkage between corruption and economic growth in Zimbabwe. The study relies on a quantitative methodology by employing a multivariate regression equation using annual time series data. Our results indicate that corruption indeed impact on investment and economic growth. Trade openness, foreign direct investment and inflation were also found to be significant. The policy implications of these findings are: Zimbabwe should reduce disproportionate government regulation of economic activities because this facilitate bureaucratic corruption, rent seeking, bribery, theft of public property and other forms of unrestrained opportunism. Removal of regulations entail political deregulation, trade openness, introducing more probity into the procurement process, strengthening anti-corruption institutions, observance of the rule of law and expanding the opportunities for ordinary citizens to participate in governance. It is anticipated that good governance would help citizens to call their rulers to account leading to better accountability, transparency and economic growth.