FINANCE minister Patrick Chinamasa has said for Zimbabwe to prosper economically, the country has to study and understand how other nations have managed to develop.
Tarisai Mandizha
Speaking at the Zimbabwe Special Economic Zone workshop in Harare yesterday, Chinamasa said the economic paths taken by countries such as the United States, Europe and China were good examples which Zimbabwe needed to take a cue from.
“We must study and understand the policies of those who created that prosperity for us in Zimbabwe and this means taking cautious and deliberate steps to steer away from raw material activities into manufacturing, value addition and beneficiation,” Chinamasa said.
He said the government has come up with an economic blueprint the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (ZimAsset) whose major thrust is to transform the economy from a producer of primary goods to value added products.
Chinamasa said one of the key strategies was to further improve the investment climate with a view to attract both local and foreign investment.
He said the substantial inflows of investment will act as a catalyst for increasing employment generation, export growth, skills attraction, technological acquisition and capacity utilisation among other benefits.
Chinamasa said the establishment of Special Economic Zones (SEZS) would attract investors.
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SEZs are defined as a designated geographical region, line of business, or a company that operates under special regulations that are different from other areas in the same country.
Chinamasa said the workshop would help the government to identify what needs to be done to improve Zimbabwe’s competitiveness.
He said stakeholders were expected to produce a document aimed at assisting the government on what direction SEZs would take.
Senior Minister of State in the President’s Office Simon Khaya Moyo said the country’s fiscal space has remained severely constrained due to poor performance of the revenue inflows against rising recurrent expenditures and a shrinking tax base.
