For the opening of parliament, legislators said they had been told not to disrupt the president’s speech.
Later presidential spokesman George Charamba said: “There has been a mix-up of speeches resulting in a situation where the president delivered the wrong speech”.
The state broadcaster had taken the significant step of not broadcasting the proceedings live, following threats from opposition MPs that they would heckle the 91-year-old leader, so the fact that he had given the wrong speech did not emerge immediately.
However, this was reportedly before it was known that the President Mugabe’s speech was the wrong one.
The Zimbabwean opposition party says this continues to prove Mugabe is no longer fit for office due to his old age.
The opposition party, Movement for Democratic Change, is using today’s events to bolster claims Mugabe is mentally-and possibly physically-unfit to rule.
“The agriculture sector performance will be below expectation and will negatively impact economic growth (but) mining growth is expected to be above 3,5 percent despite declining worldwide prices”, said Mugabe.
A coin vendor counts his coins in Zimbabwe’s capital city of Harare on June 27, 2012.
China, Zimbabwe’s, has kept away from committing to giant new funding within the southern African nation as a outcome of monetary woes at residence. Other global lenders have also rejected Mugabe’s loan requests due to outstanding arrears.
Indicating his anti-western climbdown, Mugabe said his government would strengthen ties with the worldwide Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank so as to revitalise and ailing economy. He additionally stated he intends to spend money on coal mining and energy era within the nation, reported.
Mining generates half of Zimbabwe’s export income and contributes about 17 percent of GDP. He defeated his arch rival MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai by majority in the 2013 polls.
Another opposition lawmaker, Nelson Chamisa, said he would have confronted Mr. Mugabe if he had seen the message before his speech.