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Bianca Mlilo, Business Reporter
THE Zimbabwe Building Contractors’ Association (ZBCA) has resolved to pool resources together to facilitate robust national infrastructure and contribute to reviving the economy.

Outgoing ZBCA president Mr Obert Sibanda said indigenous building contractors in the country agreed at their recent congress in Nyanga to create synergies and partnerships in infrastructure development.

“The stakeholders agreed that infrastructure was the panacea to economic revival. A steady road system, rail network, reliable water and energy supply, sewer reticulation and information and communication technologies are all enablers that need to be addressed for the economy to rise,” said Mr Sibanda.

“This sector is dogged by lack of funding and we determined that we needed to pool resources as a mobilisation tool. This would be addressed by mopping up what we can instead of spreading resources thinly.”

He said finance could be sourced from pension funds, insurance companies and the infrastructure built would benefit other sectors. For instance, he said, if there was a need to construct houses, suppliers of building materials, local authorities and furniture manufacturers would all benefit.

Employment would also be created and in this, resources would be circulating in the economy. Mr Sibanda said the key to unlocking such synergies lay in incentivising the interested stakeholders to participate.

The congress was attended by Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, Speaker of Parliament Advocate Jacob Mudenda, Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa and senior government officials.

Local authority representatives, suppliers of construction materials and banks, also attended the event, which ran under the theme: “Economic Revival through Infrastructural Development”.

The ZBCA is a non-profit membership-based association registered in 1992 to represent indigenous building contractors in the categories of building, civil as well as electrical, mechanical and structural steel engineering fields. — @BiancaMlilo