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THE Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries will early next month convene an indaba in Harare to engage policy makers and discuss ways to facilitate implementation of Government’s new medium term economic plan.
The workshop scheduled for February 5 will bring together high profile Government officials and captains of industry to interrogate the Zimbabwe Agenda for Socio-Economic Transformation spanning 2014 to 2018.
Zim-Asset is the Government’s foremost policy framework meant to inform and guide its annual economic and budgetary plans throughout the five year period.
Under Zim-Asset, Government will prioritise four main clusters namely food security and nutrition, poverty reduction, infrastructure and utilities and value addition and beneficiation to empower the majority.
According to the CZI concept paper, the workshop to be held at Sango Conference Centre will be held under the theme “Zimbabwe’s Policy Implementation Challenges-Unlocking Implementation Barriers in 2014.
Poor policy implementation has on many occasions negatively affected targets and the objective of national blueprints, resulting in sub-optimal results from otherwise brilliant Government economic projects.
Funding is also one of the biggest obstacle stakeholders will have to clear to ensure objectives, targets and goals espoused in the Zim- Asset are attained.
Objectives of the one-day workshop include engaging in a public private dialogue on the current policy instruments in order to agree on jointly monitoring policy implementation and policy impact throughout the implementation period specifically focussing on Zim-Asset.
Next month’s dialogue will also provide a platform to establish the level of congruence between Zim-Asset and the expectations of the private sector as stated in the various business membership groups’ congress resolutions and establish ways of addressing any disparities between these.
Further, expectations are that the discussions will help derive priority policy engagement areas for the private sector for its national business agenda.
Since the Office of the President and Cabinet is pushing for the implementation of the policy the dialogue will include presentation of papers from representatives from the Office regarding issues on Zim-Asset.
“The presentations will cover headline areas in Zim-Asset, progress towards implementation so far and institutional and legislative provisions put in place to enable effective implementation of Zim-Asset,” said CZI chief executive Mr Clifford Sileya.
Presentations will also entail budgetary provisions that have been put in place to enable implementation of the policy, projected level of implementation as enabled by the national budget and current challenges.
Private sector presentation will cover a comparative analysis of Zim-Asset and various business lobby groups’ congress resolutions, defining areas of congruence, gaps between business expectations and the policy and highlighting policy implementation success enablers.
CZI said expected outcomes included a proposed policy implementation and policy impact monitoring process, private sector submission of policy implementation enablers to Government and priority policy engagement areas for private sector national business agenda.
Zim-Asset was crafted to achieve sustainable development and social equity anchored on indigenisation, empowerment and employment creation.
Online Reporter