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Harare Bureau
THE government is creating relations with multi-lateral institutions to access capital markets critical for economic revival. Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa on Tuesday said the government had decided that it was in the interest of the nation to engage multi-lateral financial institutions to unlock funding. “Unless we engage the international institutions, we’ll have no access to the capital markets,” he said.
“At the moment one of the multilateral institutions which are not represented here is the European Investment Bank and we also owe them about $350 million.”
Minister Chinamasa said it was in the interest of the government’s long-term focus to access all capital markets.
“It’s very important that as a country we should look everywhere in order to move forward,” he said.
“That means we should look to the West, North, East and the South and there should be no area where we say we will not approach because we are looking at opportunities which we can exploit as a country.”
Minister Chinamasa said Zimbabwe was a small market and any business which was serious about growing should consider engaging the export market everywhere. He said the country had enormous potential and required the private sector to exploit that potential and revive the economy.
“Zimbabwe is not a basket case for the reasons that we all know and what we basically need to do is to do the correct things and we need to have a correct analytical picture of our economy,” said Minister Chinamasa.
He said no matter the amount of time that it will take to regain support from the International Monetary Fund, Zimbabwe was going to make sure that it unlocked funding for industry.
Minister Chinamasa said the government would continue to work towards regaining consensus within IMF member countries, at the same time trying to loosen up the negative attitudes that some of those countries have.
He said engagement should not be an issue for the government alone, as the private sector should take part in making necessary engagements with international institutions.
Dairibord Zimbabwe Limited chief executive Anthony Mandiwanza said there should be co-ordination between the government and the private sector to ensure the economy improved.
Online Reporter