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The pace of investment into Zimbabwe is accelerating as more and more of those seeking a good deal now recognise that Zimbabwe has a lot to offer.
A fair amount of this extra investment is now coming from Western countries, where investors had been wary for a couple of decades. But after seeing more adventurous Asian investors making reasonable profits, and hearing about those from their own countries that had decided to check Zimbabwe out for themselves, they are coming back.
Zimbabwe needs a lot of capital investment to develop faster and give everyone a reasonable opportunity of a far better life.
While Zimbabweans should be willing to make some of the required investments, all developing countries by definition are short of capital and need to open their doors to others for mutually advantageous deals.
Zimbabwe does not discriminate or have preferred investors. All are welcome and all will follow the same basic rules, which are kept as simple and as few as possible and generally follow the international best practices.
New businesses have to pay taxes, hire Zimbabweans for the majority of their workforce, and follow standard safety and environmental codes.
This week has seen the commissioning of the Hyatt Regency Harare, the former Meikles Hotel that the heirs of Stewart and Thomas Meikle decided to sell, and which needed a large injection of capital to bring it back to the highest world standards.
The investment involves Middle Eastern investors, but with Hyatt Hotels Corporation, which is an American company and is proud to put its name on a major Zimbabwean hotel and incorporate it into its international advertising and booking systems.
This is one of the main advantages of having a hotel within a global group, telling prospective guests just what they can expect.
While American investors already in Zimbabwe have been passing the word to their compatriots, basically telling it as it is and destroying myths, there has been some reluctance in some American business circles to be too prominent in Zimbabwe considering their Government’s policy.
But more and more are thinking it out and coming to a conclusion that they can do far more business with Zimbabwe.
At the same time another group of Australian potential investors wants to visit the country soon. Australian companies have been involved in opening up new areas of Zimbabwean mining.
An Australian company was the first investor in platinum group metals, near Selous, and although they ran into problems over unfamiliar geology they had no complaints otherwise.
Another Australian company, Prospect Resources, was the start-up investor in modern lithium exploration and mining in Zimbabwe with the Arcadia Mine in Goromonzi, doing the initial exploration, mapping and proving of resources, and starting the initial mining. They did sell the majority of their shareholding to present operator, Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, but had taken the initial risks and spent the fairly large sums required to prove the deposit.
And of course, Invictus Energy has led the exploration and proving of the gas and light oil condensate reserves in Muzarabani, proving a lot of people connected with global energy companies were wrong when they interpreted the results of former surveys.
So Australian mining companies have a background in Zimbabwe, so far largely as prospectors and provers of resources rather than operators of mines, but that can easily change especially when they look at the business gained by those who ran with the Australian findings and invested in large mines and processing plants.
The Government is also backing the growth of investment by its rapid progress in extending and growing the training of the required technically-qualified Zimbabweans for these new enterprises. While Zimbabwe is largely self-sufficient in areas such as business administration, there are shortages in the technical and engineering areas, not critical, but a possible dampener on expansion.
This is why such major efforts are being made to expand training and education in these essential skills with the efforts starting some time ago so that the extra numbers could come out of school with STEM O levels and A levels and then carry on to the extra places in these subjects at tertiary level.
Online Reporter