Industry casts doubt on US$40 billion Govt funding scheme
THE Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) has expressed doubt that the estimated US$40 billion Government requires to finance programmes under the National Development Strategy 1 (NDS1) will be secured within the strategy’s implementation period.
NDS1 is the Government’s five-year economic blue-print launched in 2021 running up to 2025. The other five year programme is also expected to run from 2026 to 2030.
Speaking at the ongoing CZI annual conference in Harare yesterday, the industrial lobby’s chief economist Dr Cornelius Dube said: “According to their (Government) estimates, we require about US$40 billion to fully finance the NDS 1 agenda.
“In 2021, we should have raised at least US$4,1 billion to finance NDS1 programmes. The main point is that this is not going to be easy, this is going to be a very toll order; these are the Government estimates and if we fail to raise these resources, it also means that some of the projects and programmes under NDS1 are already off track. We are already in 2022 and we know that industry never got such resources to finance industrial transformation.”
The CZI conference is running under the theme, “Glocalise”, entailing that local firms must adopt global trends. Funding and competiveness issues are dominating this year’s conference. Dr Dube said under NDS1 there is a programme called Value Chains and Structural Transformation, which requires about US$3 billion of the US$40 billion.
“And if you look at the distribution of this US$3 billion, which by the way constitute 7,5 percent of the total envelope across the NDS1 period, close to half of the US$3 billion is needed to finance the Value Chain and Structural Transformation programme at the end of the NDS1 implementation period.
NDS1, which succeeded the two-year Transitional Stabilisation Programme (TSP), is the second step of the Second Republic’s drive to attain Vision 2030. The economic blue-print, charts policies, institutional reforms and national priorities needed between 2021 and 2025 to attain an upper middle-income economy by 2030.
Last year, Cabinet adopted a communication strategy for NDS 1 as the Government targeted to create broad-based awareness of the five-year economic blueprint.
The aim of the awareness campaign is also to ensure public participation in the implementation of Government policies, programmes and projects designed to develop the country towards a prosperous and empowered upper-middle income society.
The Government believes this would reshape the national viewpoint through content creation, development and dissemination, adorn public building and spaces in Zimbabwe and at its Embassies with the country’s arts, culture and heritage products as well as improving public relations at ports of entry with appropriate welcoming messages and imagery.-ebusinessweekly
