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Tendai Mugabe, Senior Reporter
Government is working on a number of measures to boost market confidence and increase local productivity as efforts to revive the economy gather pace, Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa has said.

The VP said Government was also making efforts to address liquidity challenges and offset its external debt.

VP Mnangagwa said this on Thursday while addressing delegates attending the 2016 business review conference organised by the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce.

VP Mnangagwa said they had discussed amendments to the Indigenisation and Empowerment Act in line with the Presidential directive of April 16, 2016.

He said other measures being implemented by Government included pieces of legislation cutting across all sectors of the economy.

In the agricultural sector, VP Mnangagwa said Government had come up with a number of policies including the mechanisation and irrigation policy and the horticultural policy to spur production in the sector.

With regards to manufacturing, VP Mnangagwa said a cocktail of measure were being implemented to stimulate production.

Among the policies were the import management policy, consumer protection policy and the industrial development and the national development policies.

VP Mnangagwa said in the power sector Government was licensing independent power producers and was also crafting a power management policy.

Said VP Mnangagwa: “Government has also introduced the following policies in order to promote production and transparency in the mining, tourism and SMES sectors.

“Accordingly, a raft of measures and initiatives are being pursued to ensure that mining, tourism and SMEs become more productive. In the financial sector – the financial is the lifeblood of the any economy and the sectoral policies and programmes include recapitalisation of the Reserve Bank, amending the Banking Act, financial inclusion strategy, establishing a credit reference bureau and resuscitating the bond market.”

VP Mnangagwa said the measures were also spilling over to cover the education sector where the review of the national review of the education curricula was already under way.

He said Government was also financing the development of infrastructure for primary and secondary schools over and above the development of the science, technology, engineering and mathematics under the STEM Programme.

Turning to liquidity challenges and debt overhang VP Mnangagwa said: “Government is pleased that Zimbabweans have embraced the use of plastic money and applaud the banking sector for coming up with new age innovative products meant to promote transactions through digital and electronic platforms. Equally, consumers have grabbed the opportunity to transact conveniently.

“The country has also been struggling with a huge debt overhang with the arrears accounting for the bulk of the debt. This has been militating the country’s efforts to mobilise reasonably priced long term credit. The limited loans on the domestic market are attracting punitive interest rates of at least 15 percent per annum.”

VP Mnangagwa said it was difficult to sustain business operations at such punitive rates and engagements were underway with the RBZ to ensure that financial institutions slashed interest rates to at least 10 percent.

He said re-engagement efforts with the international community aimed at addressing the problem of the external debt were progressing well.

The VP said Government policies were meaningless unless they were implemented.

In line with this VP Mnangagwa said: “Government has in the past two years been putting in place new strategies and tools to enhance policy implementation. One such strategy is the Rapid Results Initiative which has seen active participation by Government and stakeholders who include the private sector as partners.

“The RRI has enabled the Government to adopt a not business as usual attitude to the implementation of programmes and policies.”

The 2016 business review meeting was also attended by captains of industry and Government officials.