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Harare Bureau
ZIMBABWE should set minimum production levels for landholders to ensure that agriculture reclaims its position as the country’s top foreign currency earner while ensuring food security.

Setting minimum production levels for beneficiaries of the land reform programme could be one of the steps to fixing the economy as it ensures food security and availability of raw materials for the agricultural value chain.

This, together with increasing productivity could resuscitate the economy, prominent banker and Barclays Zimbabwe managing director George Guvamatanga has said.

He said the challenges that the economy is facing are “easy to fix” but require a strategy that focuses on ensuring the availability of raw materials.

“This economy is very simple to fix. We need to start doing the right things as a country.

“The biggest issue we must do in this economy is production. Unless we want to change the model of this economy, Zimbabwe has always been agricultural driven economy. So if we still want to be importing maize, wheat, beans, sweet potatoes, things that we never used to import before, it means we have not yet started doing the right things,” said Mr Guvamatanga.

He lamented the failure to produce and export agricultural products saying this was compromising the economy.

“So if we do not fix productivity in this economy; that will be our problem. We are just a non-productive lot. Some of the people who have land do not have the capacity, knowledge or commitment to produce.

“I have argued that before giving someone a 99-year lease, there should be a minimum level of production that you expect. We must foster productivity on those people who are on the land. But we have killed the agriculture value chain,” he said.

“The real issue is productivity and that productivity will start on the farms. I have nothing against the land reform but those who were fortunate enough to be given an important national resource should use it.”