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Experts urge more ambition in industrial policy
INDUSTRIALISTS and economic experts are pushing for a more ambitious manufacturing growth target in Zimbabwe’s new National Industrial Development Policy (ZNIDP), arguing that the current proposal falls short of the country’s aspirations.
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The draft ZNIDP 2024–2030, currently under development by the government, sets a minimum manufacturing growth target of two percent per year.
However, stakeholders are calling for a much higher rate, with some suggesting up to 10 percent. “They do not even reflect the targets that we want to attain under National Development Strategy 1,” said the country representative for the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), Tichaona Mushayandebvu.
“We want very high rates of growth to transform the economy.” He argued that a 10 percent growth target would be more realistic in achieving the goals of the National Development Strategy 1, which aims to propel Zimbabwe towards becoming an upper-middle-income economy by 2030. Confederation of Zimbabwe Industry (CZI) chief executive officer Sekai Kuvarika echoed these concerns, calling the current policy a “maintenance type of ambition.”
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She pointed out that the proposed two percent growth target didn’t reflect the desired acceleration needed to reach the upper-middle-income status. “We are looking at a crucial period that requires accelerated growth,” she said.
“The current policies aren’t expressing that level of acceleration.” Economist Professor Ashok Chakravat emphasized the need for higher productivity to achieve Vision 2030, which can only be driven by industrialization. He highlighted the decline in the manufacturing sector’s share of GDP from 25 percent in the 1980s to 12 percent currently, stressing the need for a significant turnaround.
“This has to be reversed, and it’s not going to be reversed unless we understand certain key things about our industrial structure, where we are at the moment, and how we are going to transform this into something different,” he said.
Chief executive of the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce, Christopher Mugaga, raised the issue of foreign direct investment (FDI) and local content requirements. He emphasized the need for a clear strategy to attract FDI and boost local manufacturing for exports.
“The issue of raising the share of Zimbabwean products in the region is our vision, and those are tenets of an industrial policy,” he said. World Bank Zimbabwe senior country economist Victor Steenbergen stressed the importance of addressing underlying constraints that hinder private sector growth. He urged the government to improve policy coherence across different departments to achieve the desired outcomes.
“The ministry of industry and commerce really has to be bringing together different elements of government because what you find is that only so many of these areas that are binding constraints are within the ministry of industry and many of them fall outside,” he said. Despite the concerns, Higher and Tertiary Education minister Amon Murwira remains optimistic about the policy’s potential to achieve Vision 2030 through industrialisation.
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“This policy will be the hallmark of how Zimbabwe will become because it is good to vision but it is best to become. “So, becoming is through policies like this and through actions on the ground that are enabled by this policy,” he said.
The ZNIDP aims to increase the share of manufacturing value added to GDP by 20 percent by 2030, manufactured exports by 10 percent per year, and the share of manufacturing employment to total to 20 percent by 2030.
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