Govt takes stock of economic blueprint
THE Government is this week set to release a progress report on the implementation of its economic blueprint, the Transitional Stabilisation Programme (TSP), which was introduced in 2018 and ends this year.
The TSP was primarily aimed at laying the foundation for the country’s Vision 2030, under which the Government is planning to transform the country into an upper middle-income economy.
It will be succeeded by two successive five-year development plans, which will run from 2021 to 2030. The Ministry of Finance and Economic Development said the progress report would be availed to the media this week.
“The purpose of the meeting will be to give a detailed update on the progress made on the economic reforms carried out under the Transitional Stabilisation Programme (Oct 2018-Oct 2020), which comes to an end shortly,” the ministry said.
Key features of the TSP include addressing the various macro-economic imbalances, thus providing a foundation for robust economic growth and development beyond 2020. Other economic reforms included managing the Government expenditure, eradicating corruption and rationalising the civil service in order to contain the huge wage bill.
The TSP was also meant to aggressively market and re-brand Zimbabwe to facilitate tourism, trade and investment while also emphasising on public enterprises reforms.
Since the introduction of the TSP, the Government has scored several milestones on the economic front including re-introducing and stabilising the Zimbabwe dollar after years of using the multi-currency regime.
A foreign currency auction system adopted this year has seen the local currency appreciate value against the greenback and this has in turn helped stabilise prices of basic goods and commodities.
On infrastructure development, despite limited funding for capital projects, the Government has forged ahead with the construction of roads and several dams including the recently-completed Marowanyati Dam, Sengwa in Mashonaland Central and Gwayi-Shangani in Matabeleland North province.
The dam projects, for example, are part of a deliberate strategy to move away from rain-fed agriculture to irrigation in pursuit of an agro-centric economic growth plan.
Construction of new water bodies is expected to assist food-insecure communities through providing water for irrigation and fish from Command Fisheries while electricity would also be generated from some of the projects. – New Ziana
