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Brighton Gumbo Business Reporter—
THE Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) will today lead a delegation of local businesspeople to European countries where it will meet potential investors for a week. The delegation comprises representatives from different industry bodies such as the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce (ZNCC), Zimbabwe Investment Authority (ZIA), Chamber of Mines and officials from the Ministry of Industry and Commerce.
CZI president Busisa Moyo said his team will use the visit to solicit for investment and also build partnerships with European manufacturers. “The visit is aimed at promoting investment by European Union investors. We’re also looking forward to building an alliance with European manufacturers for the supply of the machinery for our local industry,” said Moyo.
Zimbabwe is in dire need of foreign direct investment (FDI) to stimulate economic growth and create jobs. The country has identified several investment projects that require close to $27 billion private sector funding under Zim-Asset. Moyo said it was important to engage and encourage European investors and businesses to consider investing in the country.
He said the CZI was recently in Italy, France, Turkey, the United States of America and Australia where interest on investing in the country is high. “We were in Milan last month as from 26 to 30 August and everything went well as there were a lot of prospective investors,” said Moyo. “We’ve witnessed the coming in of a French company taking up 60 percent controlling stake in Anchor Yeast and we’ll also take the visit as an opportunity to follow up on the prospective investors from our last visits.”
The CZI boss said during the Milan visit, CZI observed that Italy manufactures machinery that is much needed by the local industry. “Italy has a lot of highly industrial equipment that’s needed by the local industry to be productive and we’re not going to sit on that opportunity. “We’ll talk to the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair company to provide an engagement platform between the local industries and Italian equipment manufacturers in the coming 57th edition of the ZITF,” he said.
Moyo said acquisition of new machinery was necessary for the competitiveness of local firms as well as reduction in labour costs and increase in capacity utilisation. Zimbabwe needs about $12 billion to finance the implementation of development projects under Zim-Asset this year alone. The blue-print was unveiled in 2013 as a five-year cluster based plan reflecting the strong need to fully exploit the internal relationships and linkages that exist between various sectors of the economy.
These include value addition and beneficiation, food security and nutrition, social services and poverty eradication, infrastructure and utilities development. The clusters should be supported by three enabling sub-clusters — fiscal reforms, information communication technology and efficient public administration and performance management.
During the plan period, the economy is expected to grow 7.3 percent with upward growth trajectory to 9.9 percent by 2018. The envisaged success is based on a series of positive assumptions such as improved liquidity, revenue collection and access to credit lines by key sectors of the economy such as mining and agriculture.
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