BY NOKUTHABA DLAMINI
Almost half the population in Zimbabwe was in extreme
poverty in 2020 due to the combined effects of increase in the price of basic
necessities, economic contraction caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, and poor
harvests.
This is according to findings from the 2020 Rapid Poverty
Income Consumption and Expenditure Survey (PICES) Telephonic Survey conducted
by Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZimStat), in partnership with the World
Bank and Unicef released Friday.
“ZimStat together with the World Bank and Unicef, designed a
high-frequency telephone survey of households to measure the socio-economic
impact of Covid-19 on households in Zimbabwe.
A sample of 1 800 households was drawn from the 2019 Mini
PICES,” said the director general of ZimStat,
Taguma Mahonde.“The Rapid PICES Monitoring Telephone Survey is jointly
funded by the Zimbabwe Reconstruction Fund (ZimRef) and Unicef, and implemented
by ZimStat with technical support from the World Bank and Unicef.”The
Rapid PICES project, which was first embarked on in June 2020, will be
completed in November 2021.
The second round Rapid PICES was conducted from August to
September 2020, whilst the third round was conducted from mid-December to
mid-March 2021.
ZimStat has made significant progress, as evidenced by the
successful collection of data from 1774 households in the first round,1664 in
the second round&1235 households in the third round.This survey is using
computer assisted personal interviews (CAPI)method of data collection.ZIMSTAT
completed round four in May 2021 and round 5 in June 2021.
In each round the survey is adapted to collect data on
specific topics.