Zimbabwe parastatals told to stop blaming sanctions

The perennial loss making and unrepentant state owned enterprises have been warned to stop making unjustified excuses for their dismal performances.

According to corporate governance experts, it is high time government demonstrates seriousness in turning around parastatals by entrusting the key institutions into the hands of competent people.  

The story of the country's state owned enterprises has remained the same over the past decades with appalling balance sheets, unsustainable debts, misappropriation of funds, incompetent managers and obsolete machinery being the order of the day.

Over the years, they have been blaming sanctions but the message from corporate governance experts is that this blame game must just stop.
"There is no excuse for the continued dismal performance by the state owned enterprises. Delivery and profitability should be the new hymn," corporate governance expert, Proctor Nyemba said.

Government as the sole shareholder in the parastatals is concerned with the performance of the parastatals and Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa hinted that the worst of the worst is the Cold Storage Commission (CSC).

"The worst performers of course is the CSC which has allowed its assets to be attached despite having thousands of hectares of ranches," he said.

For Nyemba, with the right mix of management, parastatals can easily return to profitability.

"The whole issue revolves around leadership. What we are seeing in some of the key parastatals is absence of strategic leadership," he said.

While the other parastatals continue to be cry babies, TelOne has recently managed to weather the storm and operate profitably and competing with the private sector.

As the government acknowledges, the poor performance has nothing to do with sanctions but incompetence by management.

There is agreement that if ever the government is serious about turning around the economy, then heads must roll in parastatals.