News / National
New govt will need to grow economy within five years
06 Sep 2017 at 06:58hrs | Views
MDC-T deputy secretary general Tapiwa Mashakada has said inclusive Growth not simply growth is what Zimbabwe desperately needs in the next 5 years in order to arrest the scourge of unemployment and poverty.
"So we have to look at drivers of growth as well as enablers of growth. At present the Services sector is contributing almost 30% of GDP followed by Mining, Tourism and Agriculture etc trails behind. Here iam only talking about formal sector growth," he said.
"So Zimbabwe has to break this African growth syndrome of depending on Services. Its tupsy turvy in the sense that a country has to start with production anchored growth then manufacturing until the knowledge economy barrier is broken. The tragedy of Zimbabwe's Services driven growth is that it is important dependent and therefore not necessarily employment generating. The solution is to focus on ratcheting up production in Agriculture, Manufacturing, Mining. Such production requires domestic and foreign capital. That's were investor friendly policies and ease of doing business comes handy."
He said there is no substitute. China learnt this strategy fast after Mao Tse Tung.
"On this one Zanu PF is playing out Maoist policies. Maintaining indigenization threshold of 51% is a zero sum game. The MDC-T will review the indigenization policy threshold in a manner that is investor friendly. Regarding domestic investment, lending rates will be slashed for sure. Long term trade finance as opposed to short-term finance is the key. And capital markets are awash," he said.
"But addressing confidence issues and corruption will be the first order of business. The governance culture must change such that business not politics takes precedence. Then devolution of policy making and a Social Contract will cap it all. Concurrently infrastructural development and social service delivery can be addressed from the proceeds of growth. Finally the budget deficit will be curbed by improving revenue collection and rightsizing government. The diaspora can then chip in with all the turnaround knowledge. $100b economy. Here we come."
"So we have to look at drivers of growth as well as enablers of growth. At present the Services sector is contributing almost 30% of GDP followed by Mining, Tourism and Agriculture etc trails behind. Here iam only talking about formal sector growth," he said.
"So Zimbabwe has to break this African growth syndrome of depending on Services. Its tupsy turvy in the sense that a country has to start with production anchored growth then manufacturing until the knowledge economy barrier is broken. The tragedy of Zimbabwe's Services driven growth is that it is important dependent and therefore not necessarily employment generating. The solution is to focus on ratcheting up production in Agriculture, Manufacturing, Mining. Such production requires domestic and foreign capital. That's were investor friendly policies and ease of doing business comes handy."
"On this one Zanu PF is playing out Maoist policies. Maintaining indigenization threshold of 51% is a zero sum game. The MDC-T will review the indigenization policy threshold in a manner that is investor friendly. Regarding domestic investment, lending rates will be slashed for sure. Long term trade finance as opposed to short-term finance is the key. And capital markets are awash," he said.
"But addressing confidence issues and corruption will be the first order of business. The governance culture must change such that business not politics takes precedence. Then devolution of policy making and a Social Contract will cap it all. Concurrently infrastructural development and social service delivery can be addressed from the proceeds of growth. Finally the budget deficit will be curbed by improving revenue collection and rightsizing government. The diaspora can then chip in with all the turnaround knowledge. $100b economy. Here we come."
Source - Byo24News
