The world’s most horrible country has been revealed, and Zimbabwe tops the list.
This is according to an annual ‘misery index,’ which evaluates over 160 countries based on characteristics such as unemployment, inflation, and bank lending rates.
The African country of 16 million people has now been placed among the top five gloomiest for three years in a row.
According to the yearly study, Robert Mugabe’s cruel administration of Zimbabwe has transformed the country into an international outcast, steeped in corruption, violence, and an economic disaster that has reduced tens of thousands to agonizing poverty.
The mineral-rich country is still dealing with the economic consequences of Mugabe’s 37-year leadership.
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Venezuela, which has likewise been plagued by ‘economic mismanagement,’ and Syria, which has been mired in a horrible civil war for more than a decade, trail Zimbabwe in Hanke’s Annual Misery Index.
Professor Steve Hanke, the economist behind the rating, stated that one of the major reasons for Zimbabwe’s’most wretched’ classification is its political party’s ‘iron grip’ on power. Over the previous three decades, there have been charges of election manipulation and bloodshed.
And, under Mugabe and his successor, President Emmerson Mnangagwa, it has had two bouts of hyperinflation, in which prices climb by 50% or more month on month.
The currency’s depreciation led to horrific pictures of individuals filling buckets with cash only to buy a loaf of bread.
He said: “With elections around the corner, [opposition leader] Nelson Chamisa and his Citizens Coalition for Change is polling well, and, on the assumption that there will be fair and free elections in Zimbabwe, he just might pull Zimbabwe out of the gutter.”
Along with Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Syria, Lebanon, and Sudan are among the poorest countries.
Venezuela has seen two instances of hyperinflation under President Nicolas Maduro’s ten-year tenure.
Professor Hanke said: “Since Maduro came to power in 2013, it has also seen the oil production of its state-owned oil company PDVSA collapse by 76 per cent.”
“No wonder more than 7 million Venezuelans have fled their homeland since 2015. They’re miserable,” Professor Hanke said.
