adminNgoni Dapira Business Correspondent
BUSINESS lobby group Affirmative Action Group has called on Government to ensure policy coherence in the ongoing economic turnaround strategies under ZimAsset. AAG Manicaland chairman, Mr Fungai Chaeruka said this following the gazette of the Joint Venture Bill recently. Mr Chaeruka said there was currently no meaningful rapport on the ground despite having sound policies enacted.
“We recently have the Joint Ventures Bill that was gazzeted which is a beautiful Bill that will spearhead a lot of idle projects that have been on their death bed due to lack of capitalisation. However, these should not be paper blueprints but we want to see them being actioned. This is what ZimAsset is about,” he said.
The Joint Venture Act will provide for the implementation of joint venture agreements between contracting authorities and counter-parties. It will also establish a set of rules governing the public-private procurement process.
The Act will be responsible for considering project proposals submitted to it and assess whether or not they are affordable to the Government or any of its parastatals or enterprises intending to enter such agreements, providing value for money, providing optimum transfer of technical, operational and financial risks to the prospective investor as well as whether they are competitive or not.
Mr Chaeruka said inclusive and broad-based development would be the only way to turnaround the economy.
“As Government pushes the ZimAsset agenda, AAG is calling for inclusive and broad based development, which means we all have a role to play, from the Small to Medium Enterprises to the street vendors. But these will also require political will, which will mean cascading policies to the grassroots and ensuring policy coherence that impacts on development and improvement on the welfare of the people,” said the AAG Manicaland boss.
He added that parastatals were the vehicles of public service delivery and called for transparency and monitoring of capital loans injected in quasi government entities.
“In 2016, we want Government to channel money to productive sectors when funding comes from multi-national institutions.
“In past years a lot of money has been channelled to dead wood parastatals, but we want transparency and justification on how the funds will be disbursed especially to parastatals. We have targets under ZimAsset which should be met by 2018 but this will not be feasible if policies do not reach the ground where the ordinary businesspeople are,” said Mr Chaeruka.
Online Reporter