Brace for foreign competition, business told

Special Correspondent in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Zimbabwean businesses should brace for competition from foreign players as Government will neither stall nor delay FDI projects in their favour in the new era, President Emmerson Mnangagwa has said.

Addressing Zimbabwean professionals resident in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia yesterday, the President stressed that the country needed to play catch-up with the rest of the region, and would urgently open itself up to both foreign and domestic investments in order to create jobs and wealth for citizens.

The President said the country had attracted US$2,4 billion in FDI in the two months since his assumption of office, a figure far higher than what was managed in many years past.

“We cannot shelve progress, shelve projects, just because there are no Zimbabweans who are as yet ready or able to invest or do projects”, President Mnangagwa said.

Diasporan Zimbabweans, he said, should take advantage of opportunities the agriculture value chain, infrastructure rehabilitation and expansion, mining, manufacturing and tourism so as to position themselves for competition in the wake of the broad call for FDI.

Hailing the initiative by Zimbabweans in South Africa who recently raised more than US$400 million for rehabilitation of the country’s rail system, the President urged Diasporans to deploy the experience, skills, networks and contacts built over their years abroad.

“Zimbabwe is the new lady on the international scene. She is very attractive”, said the President, as he confirmed huge interest and goodwill in the country that the just-ended World Economic Forum’s 2018 Davos chapter had revealed.

He reiterated that Zimbabwe would soon go for elections, which had to be free, fair, credible and violence-free.

Noted the President, “If we have set free and fair elections as a threshold of our re-engagement, then there is no need to deny those who want to observe our elections.”

President Mnangagwa said his Government accepted the principle of allowing non-resident Zimbabweans to vote, but the country presently lacked the logistical capacity to effect it.

He hinted that future plebiscites would see this happening, revealing that initial focus could be on Zimbabweans living in Sadc, and possibly Ethiopia – itself the seat of the African Union.

Reflecting on the years of punitive isolation Zimbabwe had endured, he stressed that the country had been punished for its principled decision to recover its land.

“We received criticism on the mode of getting back our land. I have always said you can look for a textbook on how to cook or make a bomb, but there is no textbook on how to get back your land.

“Now you can write textbooks (on the Fast-Track Land Reform Programme) after the fact and get your PhDs … What is important is that we are now masters of our land.”

The urgent question now facing Government, he said, was how to make the land productive, pointing out that initiatives like the successful Command Agriculture showed the country could put years of food insecurity and deficiency behind it. Responding to calls for greater gender main streaming in Government, the President explained that much rested on post-election appointment opportunities, given that his current team was “a carry-over Cabinet” from his predecessor.

He urged women of “calibre and merit” to offer themselves for election if gender main streaming was to be realised.

President Mnangagwa also said Zimbabwe needed a new moral and work ethic for hardworking society in which honest rewards accrued to deserving actors.

“We are not averse to people becoming billionaires. But become a billionaire through hard work and talent, not through stealing from others.”

He added that the new dispensation had zero tolerance to corruption, and “there would be no sacred cows” in the fight against the scourge.

Turning to the November 2017 leadership transition, the President hailed the peace that prevailed, adding he was very happy and grateful that “we have been able to protect the legacy” of Cde Robert Mugabe who “is our revolutionary icon”.

President Mnangagwa arrived in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, in the early hours of Saturday and is today scheduled to attend his maiden African Union Summit since his inauguration as President of Zimbabwe on November 24, 2017.

With him are First Lady Cde Auxillia Mnangagwa, five Cabinet ministers and other senior government officials.

The Summit programme began yesterday with a meeting on Nepad, which the President attended.