Zimbabwe has unveiled a substantial rise in public spending for 2026 as authorities seek to reinforce the country’s gold-backed currency and stabilise an economy expected to slow, Bloomberg reported.

Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube told lawmakers that expenditure will reach 290 billion Zimbabwean dollars next year, up from 219 billion Zimbabwean dollars in 2025.

The minister said the additional funds will support infrastructure, tourism, climate-resilience projects, industrial development and food security. He delivered the budget speech at the Parliament complex in Mount Hampden, approximately twenty-three kilometres north of Harare.

Despite the planned expansion in spending, the Treasury expects economic growth to moderate, with gross domestic product projected to rise five percent in 2026, down from the 6.6 percent estimate for 2025, Bloomberg reported.

The move is part of Zimbabwe’s broader effort to stabilise an economy that has struggled with hyperinflation, institutional decline and limited access to international capital markets following the 1999 debt default. Central to these efforts is the ZiG, a gold-backed currency introduced last year to gradually reduce reliance on the US dollar by 2030.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa has also launched the National Development Strategy 2, a five-year economic blueprint intended to guide the adoption of the ZiG as the country’s sole currency. The plan targets upper-middle-income status by the end of the decade and emphasises macroeconomic stability alongside value addition in key sectors.