Pure Simango, Staff Writer 
INDUSTRY minister Sekai Nzenza has urged business executives to network and come up with innovative ideas meant to grow and transform their enterprises.
Speaking during a CEO Africa Roundtable meeting in the capital last week, Nzenza said executives must be alive to global business trends, which are key to growth.
Industry and Commerce minister Sekai Nzenza
“This is an opportunity for business executives to share ideas on owning the market and identifying high growth impact activities for the growth and transformation of their businesses.
“I therefore, urge all of you to take this opportunity to network and share strategic mutually-beneficial ideas, consistently alive to the ever-changing global business environment and new ways of doing business.
“I believe that this will create captains of industry and commerce who are insightful, ultra-modern, and ready to move the country towards achieving the national vision of becoming an upper middle-income economy by the year 2030,” Nzenza said.
She also said that executives were the ones to tell their story and make decisions to create employment and high standards of living.
“Your top-level managerial decisions are integral to Zimbabwe’s success story.
“In fact, those decisions you make have a direct bearing in the creation of employment, improvement of standards of living of the Zimbabwean population and economic growth.
“I would like to congratulate you for a successful 2021 strategic year.
“During the past year, we saw the maiden steps taken towards economic growth from increased capacity utilisation, increased exports and resultantly an import deficit of up to four percent.
“These are the collective gains between the government and the private sector, especially you as private sector leaders,” Nzenza said.
She added, “2022 is the year of accelerated growth and consolidation of the production and productivity gains which were made in 2021.
“This will require innovative leadership harnessing opportunities like the ones presented under the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AFCFTA) and other existing trade agreements and protocols”.
Nzenza said the Industry ministry had taken a decisive stance on standards, quality and competitiveness in its quest to penetrate global markets.
“My ministry is implementing its road-map of creating an US$8 billion industrial and commercial sector anchored on the National Development
Strategy 1 (NDS1) as well as Vision 2030. In line with the NDS1, under the pillar of moving the economy up the value chain my ministry is seized with the task of ensuring the growth and development of key value chains. I would like to urge chief executive officers … to take advantage of the opportunities presented under these various value chains to grow and diversify their businesses,” she said.
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