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Minister Patrick Chinamasa

Prosper Ndlovu Business Editor
CAPTAINS of industry yesterday urged Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa to set aside specific funding in the 2015 budget due for presentation next week to operationalise Special Economic Zones (SEZ), a major policy thrust set to ignite life into the underperforming manufacturing sector.

With industry becoming impatient over delays in implementing SEZ almost a year after its adoption, the ball is in Chinamasa’s court to clarify the next move in his budget presentation in Parliament.

Busisa Moyo, the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) president for the Matabeleland chamber told Business Chronicle delays in the implementation of such policy guidelines pertaining to the economy were not good for business growth.

“SEZ are very much an issue. We’re saying funding for SEZ, funding for policy overhauls that are binding on business and the ease of doing business, these must be set aside as part of the budget to say if we want business to live, let’s create an environment where business begins to thrive,” he said.

“If we don’t do that we’ll continue to say why is business not performing without realising that business is facing certain constraints.”

Moyo, who is also chief executive officer of the Bulawayo-based giant agro-processing firm, United Refineries Limited, said the Companies Act and the Labour Act should also be reviewed.

“The Ministry of Justice has been inundated with requests to look at these laws and so on and so on. We need special resources set aside in the budget to look at operationalising policy issues.

“SEZ are also calling, we also need to look at initiatives or bodies like Zim-Trade and the Zimbabwe Investment Authority that need to be resourced to market investment opportunities and publicise what’s happening under Zim-Asset,” said Moyo.

He implored the government and private sector to join hands in building the national image and other public relations issues relating to investment opportunities saying this was crucial to business development.

Moyo said at the core of high level sectors in need of funding were infrastructure development and bemoaned inadequate capacitation of institutions such as the IDBZ.

“We’ve got agriculture which is very important. Support to agriculture – business – community linkages, research around that and how we can create those links is crucial,” he added.

Moyo said industry was not happy with the pace at which government policies were being implemented.

“It’s very slow and you’ll find that at the bottom of it all is the resource constraint. That’s why we’re saying in the budget we need to say we’re setting aside $1 million to finalise the issue of SEZ.

“People need to travel and see best practices, people need to do that research, set up fences around the areas, you know,” said Moyo.

“We must have at least one SEZ especially in Bulawayo. At least if we start it will create and attract investors around Special Economic Zones. That’s why we’re saying it’s important but we’re being told akulamali (there’s no money).”

The term special economic zone (SEZ) is commonly used to refer to any modern economic zone in which business and trades laws differ from the rest of the country for purposes of ensuring growth of a particular sector.

Under the initiative, Bulawayo is envisaged to be declared a manufacturing zone with other places to be set aside for instance as mining, tourism and cropping zones.