‘Zim Asset is about you and me’

Carter Mavhiza Business Correspondent
A lot has been said about the country’s new economic blueprint, Zim Asset, that is meant to spearhead our road to prosperity.
It identifies the four pillars of food security and nutrition, social services and poverty reduction, infrastructure and utilities and value addition and beneficiation as key drivers for the building of our economy.
Zim Asset represents a well-crafted policy which when fully implemented will set free our economy and open doors to economic and social stability.

While the blueprint promises a lot the finalised commitment by all stakeholders will be a necessary ingredient to unlock its potential.
Finalised commitment is the unwavering resoluteness, correct attitude and aligned actions by the leadership and the entire population.
The most important resource that we have to consider before we even ask how the Government will finance the initiatives, are the people.
People are the most significant factor in the building of any economy. Foreign direct investment is important but equally important is local direct investment in all building initiatives.

Local direct investment encompasses the people and their attitudes, resoluteness, accurate actions and savings. The sincerity of the people as manifested in their immediate focus and actions is the key that will unlock our depressed economy in Southern Africa.

Finalised commitment entails a shift in focus by the people from immediate gain and wanton rent seeking behaviour to sacrifice and foresight.

The liberation struggle is a good precedent for meaningful exploits that hinge on the well calibrated and decisive efforts by the people.
Both Zanla and Zipra cadres who fought in the war of liberation were selfless in their efforts and they sacrificed on the African altars the issues of self and immediate gain.

The burden of building the economy should be carried by all Zimbabweans irrespective of tribal, political and religious inclinations.
Indeed, people are the first and immediate resource for any revolution.

There is need for the mobilisation of people to fully embrace the mentality of building ahead of consumption. Zimbabwe can only be built by the virtues of sacrifice and accurate actions.

We have to defeat the pointlessness of self and elevate the concept of building for another.
The future of Zimbabwe is in our children and grandchildren, and it will weigh on the scales of the commitment and values we are passing down, or our appetite for consumption, and propensity to self-enrichment.

Finalised commitment for the successful implementation of Zim Asset is structural and constructional. It is structural in the sense that there is need for accurate structures that make implementation and delivery sustainable.

The grouping of ministries into clusters for managing the deliverables of Zim Asset is one of the structures that were outlined in the blueprint.

This represents institutional structures for delivery. Inside these ministries are people and it is the people who have to identify with the policy so that a corporate identity with the blueprint is achieved. While acknowledging those who are hands on in Government departments, we cannot ignore the common man and woman in informal trade, the church and multiple sectors of the economy.

Building people for economic turn-around or tapping the human resource for nation-building should not be an activity that should be left to chance. Massive national consciousness has to be cultivated. The pool of skilled and semi-skilled labour is available but the right attitude, focus and mentality shifts have to be embraced at national level.

It requires a revisit of our values, ethics, national ethos and founding principles. These are the cogs that turn the wheels of finalised commitment.

If these issues are not addressed, the exogenous factors of corruption and graft that are rampant in our systems will stand in the way of Zim Asset and our efforts will be rendered futile.

Finalised commitment is constructional because it is imperative that we all have to put on a building mentality.
Movement to building an economy is not circumstantial but it rests on the foundations of unsurpassed commitment.

We need to curb the unbridled tendencies of unquenched self-enrichment that are bedevilling our nation. This is achievable by nurturing the constructional power to build our country at the expense of temporary success and enjoyment.

People have to be rallied to embrace national initiatives. Lest we forget that our people have put on a survival of the fittest mentalities post the 2008/ 2009 economic challenges.

The perception of the people plays a key role in the economics of any nation. We have to rally our nation to a new era as documented in Zim Asset.

Finalised commitment calls to the tenets building and investment. Local direct investment starts with savings from households. There is a temptation to believe that there are no savings but the state of congestion on our roads testifies that households are saving and not for capital goods but luxury vehicles and other consumables.

Imagine if all those savings splashed on second-hand cars and state-of-the-art Mercedes-Benzes were investments going into buying plant and machinery.

Value addition and beneficiation that are postulated by Zim Asset will need investment first by households. Indeed, we need to play our part and that will be a true test of finalised commitment.

We have to defeat profit maximisation in the day of building the economy. We can learn a lot from the Chinese.
A typical example of Apple’s products is used. The income from value addition is as low as US$4 to US$10 for every iPhone that is assembled in China using components sourced from Germany, Thailand and the United States of America.

We need to foster a business culture that makes businesses comfortable with small profit and thereby leverage on volumes.
This is a call to the business sector that fly by night growth is not sustainable in this age.

Price disparities by businesses have made imports cheaper and local commodities unaffordable and this has not helped our current account balance.

There is need for commitment by the business sector to align their prices to the ruling exchange rates. Zimbabweans have not benefited from the depreciation of the rand in the past few months because of the insincerity of the business sector.

These actions at one time saw the same business community rejecting the coins that had been mobilised to allow the breakdown of notes and availability of change in transactions to be smoothened.

When we say Zim Asset needs our finalised commitment, it calls for the business community to appreciate the long-term effects of their actions on the agenda that is on the table.

The agenda of finalised commitment cannot be put to rest without a word for the banks.
It is not Government that should rally the people to have confidence in banks but it is the policies, the attitudes and actions of banks that should attract people to transact through the banks.

High transaction charges and prohibitive regulations that serve colonial interests and imperialist agendas need revision.
Banks hold on to revolving funds and earn revenue from it as they toss the entrepreneurs demanding endless documentation which we all know serves no purpose in some quarters.

With the emergency of disruptor innovations such as EcoCash, surely banks need to wake up and smell the coffee and be responsive for the sake of Zim Asset.

Even if FDI comes, it will bear no fruit for Zim Asset unless banks return to earning income from their core business.
Building an economy is a deliberate, strategic and conscious act. There must be willing accountability by office bearers and all citizens so that we can be able to measure our output nationally.

A welcome development on the part of Government is that it has adopted performance contracts for top level office-bearers.
This will induce the much needed productivity at lower levels as the leadership seeks to attain the set performance targets.
That move by Government is an act of finalised commitment that will transform the output from ministries.

It is reassuring that the clusters that will be set up under Zim Asset will surely deliver as failure will see heads rolling.
The sincerity of our actions, our aligned focus as citizens and the leadership is the foundation on the rock.

Our future is in our hands and those hands are our finalised commitment to do nothing else but build.

Carter Mavhiza is a graduate in Finance and Banking from the University of Zimbabwe and a ICSAZ student. Email: vhizworks @gmail.com