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Minister Mike Bimha

Lovemore Zigara, Midlands Correspondent
THE Government has begun the process of restructuring the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) which will see some entities that fall under the corporation being weaned to indigenous players.

IDC is a parastatal whose mandate is to stimulate industrial development in the country.

Most companies presently under the IDC are facing viability challenges due to a plethora of challenges among them under-capitalisation and antiquated technology.

Industry and Commerce Minister Mike Bimha said the Government would want to make IDC the epicentre of industrial development hence its restructuring is part of efforts to make it efficient and effective in carrying out its mandate.

He said: “Government is looking at state enterprises and parastatals with a view to restructuring and re-organising them to make sure they’re delivering. So we have a big exercise taking place to revisit the IDC in terms of a strategic thrust.

“We want an IDC which becomes a tool for industrial development . . . therefore there’re a number of models that we’re looking at which we will adopt for this exercise.”

“We’ve the same entity in South Africa and other countries and we’re all looking at how best can we re-organise IDC Zimbabwe so that it delivers on the objectives of assisting industrial development. We’ll look at companies under the IDC and see whether some are still core to the business.

“Some will hive off and some we will consider giving them to indigenous players so that we end up with an effective and efficient IDC,” he added.

Efforts to find new investors for some of the troubled companies that IDC was disposing last year hit a brick wall after failing to find takers.

The corporation had intended to dispose of Zimglass, Allied Insurance, Almin Metal, Amtec, Deven Engineering, G&W Industrial minerals, Surface Investments, Stone Holdings and Zimbabwe Grain Bag among others to third parties.

The IDC intended to use funds from the disposal of its shareholding to restructure its debt and generate seed capital to fund new projects.