Zim should build resource linkages: Think-tank

Business Reporter
Zimbabwe Economic Policy Analysis and Research Unit said the potential of capital intensive sectors such as mining in the country can only be maximised through building resource linkages within the economy. In a report ZEPARU yesterday said these linkages comprise revenue linkages, backward linkages, forward linkages, knowledge and spatial linkages that have the capacity to spawn new industries associated with mining.

The report said like other resource based economies, Zimbabwe should take advantage of the high level of prices for natural resources to unlock resource based structural transformation.

“Like other resource based economies, Zimbabwe should take advantage of the high level of prices for natural resources to unlock resource based structural transformation.

“In this respect the dilapidated state of infrastructure offers vast opportunities for labour intensive recovery and growth, implying labour intensive construction has immense potential right from the beginning,” said the report.

The period noted that despite the presence of vast natural resources, Zimbabwe should address the absence of an explicit employment policy where social and economic goals are integrated consciously into the macro- economic framework, strategies and programmes adopted to deal with unemployment and indeed poverty reduction.

ZEPARU said the absence of the policy has largely failed to stem and reverse the scourge where most people have been rendered jobless.
“This has been worsened by the deteriorating macro-economic framework as a result of 1997-2008, the mismatch between supply of labour and its demand, in both quantity and quality, emanating in part from the supply driven education system, which has failed to meet specific requirements of the economy,” said the report.

ZEPARU said the level of unemployment stands at 10,7 percent but the challenge is that the bulk of the unemployed are locked in low productivity sectors of the economy, in communal agriculture and the informal sector implying under-employment.