By A Correspondent= Zimbabwe is expecting a minimum of about 50 000 job losses this year as the economic recession continues unabated.

Even before the coronavirus pandemic outbreak, the Zimbabwean economy was already on a downward trend mainly because of drought, electricity and fuel crisis.

Speaking to Business Times, Economist Tony Hawkins said the coronavirus pandemic has resulted in the retrenchment of a huge number of temporary workers while some took huge pay cuts despite a difficult operating environment.

Hawkins said:

We expect over 50,000 employees to lose their jobs by year-end due to the impact of Covid-19 pandemic to business compounded by perennial challenges such as forex challenges, power outages, droughts and rampant inflation.

From the recent survey carried out, 23% of the registered companies have trimmed permanent employees while 50% of the companies have laid-off temporary employees to relieve pressure on the balance sheets which struggled to meet operational costs and wage bills

The government announced a national lockdown in March this year as a measure to curb the spread and transmission of the coronavirus.

As the number of coronavirus cases is going down, Zimbabwe is slowly loosening the lockdown restrictions in a bid to save the drowning economy.

The Zimbabwean industry is collapsed, for decades, therefore, the economy relies on imports. Therefore, the COVID-19 lockdowns which have been in effect globally have had a huge adverse impact of the Zimbabwean economy.