‘Government is assessing NDS1 milestones’

THE government says it is continuously evaluating the effectiveness of its economic blueprint, National Development Strategy 1 (NDS1), to address policy shortfalls, as it seeks to meet an upper middle-income economy by 2030.
This comes as the realisation of Vision 2030 has been facing hurdles in the form of domestic and external shocks, including inflationary pressures and global volatility.
This year marks the midpoint in the implementation of the plan, which was rolled out in 2018.
The key focus areas of the plan include economic growth and stability, food security and nutrition, and governance.
The deputy chief secretary for policy analysis, coordination, devolution and development planning in the Office of the President and Cabinet, Willard Manungo, recently told The Financial Gazette that assessing the plan’s effectiveness was a priority.

“We have been implementing as government the NDS 1 in 2021, 2022 and we have had the first half of this year in terms of implementing it. We have been able to undertake a midterm review of the progress that we have been making in terms of implementing NDS 1. The essence of the review is to relate the gains that we have realised to actual performance against what we set out to achieve under it.
“The variances that we then realise are from the interventions that government will be making in the last half of 2023 into 2024, and 2025,” Manungo said.
“All this is to try and inform how we need to accelerate the realisation of the vision of an empowered society by 2030.”
He highlighted that starting in 2026, the government would then come up with NDS 2, which will complete all the missing pieces in terms of the interventions made on the socio-economic front for government to realise the aspirations of an upper-middle-class economy.
Meanwhile, Finance minister, Mthuli Ncube recently revealed that the government has undertaken a mid-term review of NDS1 from March to June 2023, providing an update on implementation of the blueprint.
Ncube noted that overall progress has been positive across all the 14 priority areas.
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