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Harare Bureau

THE Zimbabwe Investment Development Agency (ZIDA) is now fully and properly structured to operate as the premier institution for the facilitation and growth of foreign direct investment into the country, chief executive officer, Mr Doug Munatsi, has said.

He, however, clarified that it would be a process until they fully actualise the mandate and efficacy of a one stop shop investment centre, adding ZIDA was “on top of things and getting better”.

Zimbabwe reformed its previous investment promotion agency, due to bottlenecks investors faced, to drive new investment into the country by streamlining the process and making it less cumbersome than before.

As such, ZIDA has been designed in such a way or with a view to harmonise all domestic laws with bearing on investments, which will promote, protect and facilitate investment into the Southern African country.

Zimbabwe has instituted wide reforms since 2017 when the incumbent administration took over, to drive investment, especially FDI, and that include scrapping the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act.

The country is also currently working on a number of additional areas relating to the ease of doing business and has committed to pay US$3,4 billion to white former farmers who lost land under agrarian reforms.

Foreign investment into Zimbabwe last year fell by 23.7 percent to US$40.06 million compared to the same period in the prior year, with analysts attributing the decline to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic

Foreign direct investment (FDI) into Zimbabwe totalled US$745 million in 2018 from US$349 million in 2017. FDI was US$421 million in 2015, and went down to US$372 million in 2016, as foreigners remained skeptical.

The comment by Mr Munatsi comes as ZIDA, previously the Zimbabwe Investment Authority (ZIDA) is focusing on developing value propositions for special economic zones to facilitate investment in the country.

Mr Munatsi said the reformed and restructured investment agency was looking to make benefits for investing in (SEZ) more attractive. Already, declared zones include Beitbridge, Victoria Falls and Sunway City.

“We need to provide value propositions to investors. It’s not just a matter of saying we have a special economic zone. You have to make sure you have what investors are actually looking for,” he said.

Mr Munatsi said ZIDA had moved from the old practice of merely declaring SEZs without properly thinking them through in order to offer the desired value proposition to potential investors into the country.

“We want to make sure that the ones that are there are done properly and then we are developing ideas on what to do next,” he told our Harare Bureau.