The manufacturing productivity was declining as well as the mining sector. Zimbabwe's gross domestic product declined and the country's economic growth was negative. Due to the drought and the collapse of industries the country experienced rampant unemployment. This unemployment led to the migration of young professionals who were skilled to countries like South Africa, Britain, America, Australia and New Zealand. The implementation of the economic structural adjustment programme was supposed to revamp the country's economy but as a result of declining employment opportunities due to the closure of industries, the programme failed.
Because the government had to reduce public expenditures, these cutbacks entailed the end of many public subsidies. This saw the introduction of user fees for education, health and this had a huge impact on the poor since they could no longer afford these basic necessities.
This coupled with high inflation and the rise in cost of living and the decline in real wages resulted in not only widespread poverty but it also led to political disaffection. This led to the failure of the government's economic structural adjustment programme as the programme was now not achieving its goals. The loan that was meant for ESAP from the African Development Bank and the African Development Fund was approved in 1991 December and signed in January 1992.The agreement did not come into full force till May 1992.I would believe that the delay in the disbursement of the funds could have contributed slightly to the failure of the programme since it had already kicked off.
Before ESAP public enterprises in Zimbabwe constituted a big drain and burden on the government budget. The operations of the state enterprises such as Zesa, Ptc and Gmb were costly and some of them were inefficient and sustained huge losses. Government payments in the form of subsidies grants and advances were made to cover these losses.