BCZ calls for national economic vision

David Govere made the call in Victoria Falls last Friday at the KM Financial Solutions annual CEO Africa Roundtable Conference.
Mr Govere said the 10 key imperatives were agreed on at BCZ’s inaugural conference held in Nyanga last year. BCZ is the country’s supreme business representative body, bringing together the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries, Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce, Chamber of Mines and the Commercial Farmers’ Union.
It includes the Zimbabwe Farmers’ Union, Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers’ Union and the Employers’ Confederation of Zimbabwe.
Other proposed imperatives include executing plans, building national confidence, building infrastructure, financing agriculture, competitiveness, value addition, empowerment, cluster development and harnessing multiple efforts.
Mr Govere said over the years Zimbabwe has tried different strategies to grow the economy, but the time had come to conduct a self-introspection to identify mistakes made along the way and put collective efforts from now onwards.
“What is needed is a clear national vision driven by the 30-60 age groups. The number one imperative is marriage into the vision of growing the economy by 10 percent per annum. We need the desire to consistently grow this economy over the next 25 years,” he said.
He said other regional countries whose economies were by far smaller than Zimbabwe’s a decade ago, have since significantly outgrown this economy and these included Botswana, Zambia, Namibia and Angola.
When Zimbabwe’s economy was at US$6,7 billion in 2010, South Africa’s GDP stood at US$329 billion, Angola US$120 billion while Zambia, Namibia and Botswana GDPs were all above US$14 billion at the time. Zimbabwe’s economy was now smaller than Rwanda, ravaged by genocide decades ago, but had now become an ICT distribution giant in Africa with a US$26 billion economy.
“Only 10 years ago, Zimbabwe assisted Rwanda to set up its ICT systems for trade. Something is happening in the region that we are failing to be part of. There is something we have lost along the way. We need a reality check,” said Mr Govere.
“Since we had dropped so low, there is a great opportunity to climb up to where we used to be and then try and do things better than we used to.”
He said the country should not derive comfort in the current sustained growth as it possessed the potential to do better and should have surpassed this level way back.

 

 

Zimbabwe’s economy is estimated to have contracted by at least 50 percent during the decade of economic crisis characterised by hyperinflation.
Globally, economies such as Brazil used to be classified in the same league as Zimbabwe, but today the South American country has grown to surpass many economies and is now regarded as the world’s sixth biggest economy.
BCZ has since assigned various private sector business groupings – CZI, ZNCC, Chamber of Mines, EMCOZ, ZFU, CFU and ZCFU – to look into the various imperatives critical to attain the US$100 billion economy target.
Speaking at the same event Deposit Protection Board managing director Mr John Chikura, said ethical conduct would be critical to achieve the economic target.
“The US$100 billion economy vision is certainly within sight and with our combined determination the goal is within our grasp,” he said..
He said it was a shame that the economic crisis of the last decade saw people treating practices such as stealing and trespassing as “really normal behaviours”.
Mr Chikura said the decay of ethical conduct should be stamped out if the country was serious about achieving the US$100 billion economy target by 2040.