Blueprint to lay ground for sustainable growth — minister

The National Development Strategy (NDS), expected to usher in an era of sustained and shared socio-economic growth in line with Vision 2030, will soon be unveiled by Government.

The strategy will replace the Transitional Stabilisation Programme inaugurated by the New Dispensation in 2018, to clean up the economic and legal fundamentals to transform Zimbabwe’s economy towards middle-income status.

Finance and Economic Development Minister Professor Mthuli Ncube said the first phase of NDS will run from 2021-25.

This will be succeeded by NDS 2 that will run from 2026-30, by which time Government hopes Zimbabwe will be an upper middle-income economy.

In his address during a Zanu PF provincial development committee meeting in Masvingo over the weekend, Prof Ncube said that NDS 1 will be ready in a few weeks.

The NDS was expected to lay the ground conditions for Zimbabwe to achieve the required socio-economic transformations at a faster rate, leveraging on the gains achieved since the advent of the New Dispensation to date.

“We are developing the National Development Strategy that will run from 2021-25 and we want to make sure that we continue with the food security agenda, macro-economic stability agenda, improve on governance, mining and tourism while also working on import substitution,” said Prof Ncube.

“In a few weeks, I will be able to share with you this NDS document that we will also have to officially launch. We are going to make sure that everything that we have been doing now is actually heightened under NDS 1.”

With more than 10 000 water bodies and abundant fertile land, Zimbabwe should stop importing food.

Farmers under-using their land were going to lose it, as Government was in the process of restructuring Agribank to create a Land Bank to specifically cater for financing the agricultural sector to ramp up production.

Cutting the country’s import bill was one of the steps taken by Government to make sure the local economy stabilised and grew.

“The first stage under TSP was to make sure that our people are able to put food on the table and send their children to school and help grow their income,” he said.

Local industrialists remained coy to openly admit that currency reforms introduced by Government leading to the return of the Zimbabwe dollar had made local industry more competitive.

But as proof of the switch, imports had declined, while a mundane survey of local shops and supermarkets would show a sharp increase in the number of locally-produced goods.

Prof Ncube said most industries were either managing to break even or growing faster, thanks to the reintroduction of the local currency which gave their products competitive edge on the international market.

Government and financial institutions were continuing to support the agricultural sector via the Pfumvudza and Command Agriculture schemes, with more than two million farmers having been trained under in a bid to make Zimbabwe food secure.

He said the Global Compensation Agreement with white former farmers was nothing new, despite comments by the country’s detractors, as Government had for many years been paying compensation to white former farmers.

Turning to roads, Prof Ncube expressed satisfaction with progress in the widening and rehabilitation of the Harare-Beitbridge Highway, that was being done by local companies, using local resources.

This, he said, was being done now by Government after foreign contractors failed to do anything for the past 10 years.

Prof Ncube called on provincial governments to take the devolution programme seriously, which he described as a game-changer that helps Government fulfil the development priorities of grassroots communities.

Local authorities must continue bidding for more funds as Government had set aside $2,9 billion under the programme this year.

Government was forging ahead with opening dry ports in Mwenezi, on the outskirts of Masvingo City and in Makuti to speed up movement of human and vehicle cargo.-herald.cl.zw