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Thupeyo Muleya in Beitbridge
GOVERNMENT has declared Beitbridge Town a special economic zone as the new dispensation intensifies efforts to attract more investment under the “Zimbabwe is open for business” mantra.

The proclamation was made in an extraordinary gazette published on September 28. Other towns which were recently accorded with same status are Victoria Falls and Mutare. According to the notice, the declaration was made under the premise of section 20 of the Special Economic Zones Act chapter 114:34.

The Government adopted the SEZs drive a few years ago as part of measures to boost foreign direct investment (FDI) and local business viability so as to increase employment creation in identified areas.

Beitbridge acting town clerk Mr Loud Ramakgapola said the development was welcome considering that the town had adopted a robust strategy to attract investment after it was recently upgraded to a municipality.

“This is a welcome development considering that we are busy marketing our town to promote investment and the coming in of special economic zones is a huge boost for us.

“We think this will help us to attract more investment into the town and make it bigger than it is,” he said.

“You will note that we were recently upgraded into a municipality and as we move forward we want to turn this town into a proper urban set up.

‘‘One of the things we look at are areas that are very rural and convert them to fit into the urban set up.

“We are in the midst of modernising some of the places including Dulivhadzimu bus terminus.

“We also want to work on the pricing of our stands to see if we can attract the right investors to boost economic and infrastructure development.”

Mr Ramakgapola said Beitbridge Town was strategically located at the country’s and Sadc’s busiest port of entry where economic activities were high.

He said there were plenty of opportunities in infrastructure development, accommodation and tourism sectors in the town.

According to Mr Ramakgapola the municipality would soon set up an information centre within the town to aggressively market the town’s business opportunities among others. “We are currently working on quotations to carry out the street and suburbs as we move a gear up in re-organising and transform the town into modern urban settlements.

“Hopefully by the end of October we should be having some of the streets and suburbs named,” he said.