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Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa yesterday said Zimbabwe was open to investment even from countries that have imposed illegal economic sanctions on the country. Western countries led by the US and Britain imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe at the turn of the millennium in retaliation for the government’s land reform programme under which farmland was taken from white farmers to resettle landless Blacks.
The sanctions resulted in an unprecedented economic meltdown that the country is still to fully recover from.
Briefing ambassadors accredited to Zimbabwe on the new economic blueprint, the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim Asset), Chinamasa said Zimbabwe’s potential to turn around her economy lay in co-operation.
The economic blueprint, an extract from the Zanu PF’s 2013 election manifesto, is the Government’s economic guideline over the next five years.
“The Zim Asset document, the blueprint, takes into account the existence of overriding existing threats, sanctions, as well as hostile measures against us from some hostile countries,” he said.
“This Zim Asset document is saying not-withstanding our political differences Zimbabwe stands ready to allow our economies to talk to each other, we want economies to talk to each other not – withstanding our political differences which may take time, we are of cause appealing and we hope that the lifting of sanctions will be sooner rather than later, but before the lifting of sanctions please let us start the groundwork for economies to talk to each other, business people to talk to each other, economic relations be established.”
Turning to the blueprint, Chinamasa explained that it was cluster based and sought to foster closer linkages between various economic sectors.
He said the clusters included food and nutrition, social services and poverty eradication, infrastructure and utilities and the value addition and beneficiation clusters.
He said building strong inter-linkages within the various economic sectors would help forge a robust economy.
“It is cluster based, reflecting the inter-relationships and inter-linkages between the various facets of our economy and infact what we do not have in our economy are these inter-linkages and inter-relationships between the various sectors.
“Agriculture is not talking to manufacturing, agriculture is not talking to tourism, retail is not talking to agriculture so is the wholesale sector, it is not talking to our manufacturing sector. That is what we have to correct,” he said.
Chinamasa also explained the role that the country’s abundant mineral resources would play in the implementation of the blue-print.
On value addition and beneficiation, the blueprint says, all primary commodities across sectors were expected to create more value through processing and beneficiation.
It says given the country’s abundant mineral resources base, government expected the sector to contribute immensely towards the Gross Domestic Product growth.
The blueprint also sets short-term interventions whose results were expected to be immediately felt. – New Ziana.
Online Reporter