Minister Nyoni blasts ‘top civil servants’

By Abel Zhakata
THE Minister of Small and Medium Enterprises and Cooperative Development, Sithembiso Nyoni, has castigated top civil servants who do not embrace pro-poor programmes in their institutions saying they were a stumbling block to the economic development of the country.

She said this while officially launching her ministry’s 2015 strategic review and planning workshop in Mutare today.

“We should facilitate the poor to also play their role in economic development. As departments in ministries and as heads of parastatals we must have that attitude and inclination to facilitate the poor to engage and grow. Let us really know that we will be more of a stumbling block than a facilitator to the people’s development if we do not change our attitudes. I would like to see a strategic plan that will sharpen the appropriate institutional mechanism to facilitate SME development in Zimbabwe. You must clearly tell us in your strategies how you want to achieve that,” she said.

The workshop, she said, provided a platform for reviewing the ministry’s performance in the last year from an operational perspective.

“I have the confidence and trust that this workshop will enable our esteemed stakeholders to identify emerging issues and challenges which will result in subsequent informed Government policy formulation, implementation and monitoring.”

Minister Nyoni said big companies were closing down due to sanctions imposed on the country and thus SMEs must come to fill in the void.

“The country continues to suffer the effects of the ruinous sanctions, the business environment continue to push costs of doing business upwards thereby straining our micro, small and medium enterprises and the liquidity challenges continue to worsen access to finance. As a result of a hoard of these and other challenges, large companies continue to close down, increasing the rate of unemployment which subsequently reduces the purchasing power of our population. It is the SMEs that should absorb the problems of unemployment,” she said.

She said there was a need to formalise operations of the informal sector through registration.