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The World Bank, perhaps unfairly, tends to have the reputation of looking on global and national economies with a somewhat gloomy face, emphasising the problems, stresses and strains.
So it was surprising last week when the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries heard a very upbeat presentation on Zimbabwean economic opportunities from World Bank senior country economist for Zimbabwe Mr Victor Steenbergen, who spoke in many ways as a promoter of Zimbabwe, with the caveats that we expect from a banker mind you.
But the basic message that he was pushing is that there is so much untapped potential in Zimbabwe, especially as we add private sector organisation and investment to what is already happening, that the prophets of doom and destruction are simply wrong, and that our future, if we work hard and make right decisions, is rather bright.
So many Zimbabweans actually like complaining, or feel that they should be able to get rewards when they make bad management decisions or simply for breathing rather than working, it is refreshing when a well-informed outsider can look dispassionately at our country and our economy and see vast opportunities.
It is interesting where he sees the initial range of opportunities we have only partly or perhaps barely tapped, when you think about future volumes. The traditional big three of agri-business, mining and tourism tended to dominate the presentation, with the industrialists being addressed still largely having to make a big splash.
Farmers and agri-businesses obviously need to expand their range to include some of the far higher value crops, such as horticulture where there are good markets within range of a single flight or of land and see transport for some of the products if people decided to move quickly.
We are now building up this industry, although we still have some catch up to do to where were once were, with daily charter flights, although that is partly offset by the greater cargo space in scheduled passenger flights, often having capacity to take out such produce in the spaces that were used to bring in critical machine parts and other urgent spares.
The opportunities require both high-quality fresh produce as well as a range of processed products, which is where industrialists come in. Customers will demand near perfection plus zero disease or other problems so quality is what will sell. But this opens up many opportunities, including in the testing of produce before it is flown out as we have already seen.
A lot of Zimbabwean farmers know what they are doing and can produce this sort of quality product, so the opportunities are large.
Mining as a second area mentioned. There has been dramatic expansion in recent years, with value more than quadrupling, and yet we are possibly only touching the surface when it comes to the modern minerals such as lithium and the platinum group, where Zimbabwe moves into the highest ranks of African and world reserves. Output has been climbing and local processing has been pushed, already to concentrates of both with plans to go to the next value-addition stages by the investor mining companies.
But apparently we can increase production significantly, even when our percentages appear in the top-ten charts.
Tourism, and here Mr Steenbergen was quite honest in that it tends to be totally dominated by Victoria Falls, when there is a lot more that could be developed with the same passion and expertise. One particular area for development is to try and get more people coming for the Falls, and this is the destination that everyone knows about, to then stay for a few more days and look at other attractions, everything from the animals down the road in Hwange to areas far further away.
We still have a fairly low average of bed nights for most international visitors and the serious development, since there are upper limits as to how many people can visit the Falls each day before it becomes too crowded.
Tourism, and mining and agri-business all share another interesting characteristic: they can be labour intensive and this is another plus for Zimbabwe, increasing wealth and getting more people to earn a reasonable living.
We need to note that Mr Steenbergen seems to agree strongly with the Government, that the private sector is the only real vehicle for creating wealth although it obviously does need support and infrastructure from the Government. But Governments do not rally run businesses, although provide the base on which they can be run.
Mr Steenbergen brought up the complications of some of our permit and licensing systems. The Government has been working on simplifying these, and we are probably coming into the stages where the private sector, potential investors and even the World Bank need to start sketching what they think is required and how the essential requirements can be put together in a single licence.
What we have to keep is the environmental, health and safety rules, although these can be brought together as far as possible to simplify matters, and then get businesses to follow a simple tax code, and it needs to be simple, and a clear and easy to implement labour code.
One complication is that licences and permits come from different authorities under different Acts of Parliament and a whole pile of statutory instruments. We have moved towards a one-stop authority but clearly need to push that further and winnow out anything that does not really make sense, or more importantly and usefully, be able to combine authorities or at least the permit ends of them, so that a simple and straightforward permit can be issued with rational requirements, instead of a pile of them.
Online Reporter