ED meets Belgian investors

Farirai Machivenyika, Harare Bureau
President Mnangagwa yesterday met a three-member delegation of Belgian investors who expressed interest in exploring business opportunities in the country.

The three were part of a 15-member Belgian delegation that was supposed to visit the country but some of them cancelled the trip due to the violence unleashed by MDC Alliance protestors last week.

The violence has cost the country money running into hundreds of millions of dollars due to destroyed property and lost time.

In an interview after meeting President Mnangagwa, Mr Olivier De Brouwer who headed the delegation and is Director of Polytra an international logistics company said he had an excellent meeting with the President.

“We had an excellent meeting with the President. Development of countries like Zambia, South Africa as also I believe Malawi is also dependant on Zimbabwe and the field I am in is logistics. We have our own companies in most of the countries and in Zimbabwe we have been here before and I think it is high time that we come back here.

“What the President said to me is that we have in fact all possibilities here that we will be welcome to invest here,” he said.

Mr De Brouwer pledged to use his connections in the Belgian-Luxembourg African Chamber of Commerce to market Zimbabwe as an investment destination.

“I am also a member of the board of the Belgian-Luxembourg African Chamber of Commerce so I have to promote your country besides my job,” he said.

Mr De Brouwer said in the past he worked with the National Railways of Zimbabwe and impressed on the importance of having a reliable transport network for economic development.

“Logistics is very important if you want to develop the country you have to have excellent connections by road, by rail, by air and it is not so complicated because here the roads are good. The railways is ok. We can certainly improve. The rest is perfect because it is easy to reach any place in this country,” said Mr De Brouwer.