President Mnangagwa
In about a couple of weeks, the year 2022 will come to a close, to open 2023, an election year for our nation.
Global situation
From early 2020, and since the beginning of this year, both our country and the global order have been stalked and buffeted by the Covid-19 pandemic, and by the conflict in Eastern Europe. Add to both the challenges of global climate change, and what you get is a compounded national and global situation which put the resilience of our nation and that of the Global order to severest test.
We held our own!
I am quite pleased our nation, led by Government, rose to the occasion so remarkably. To the citizen, whether at home or abroad, there was no by-stander. Thank you Zimbabweans for the sterling effort which you exerted and executed with such amazing unity of purpose. That became a winning formula which saw our nation going through, and even registering remarkable gains in adversity. Our economy is projected to grow by 4,6 percent in the year we are about to close. This growth rate is above the average in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Excellent response to Covid-19
The pandemic which wreaked havoc in almost all parts of the world, including developed countries, also hit us, but relatively with subdued devastation, when compared to many nations of the world. Our vaccination roll-out strategy delivered, in the process saving many lives we could have lost. We mobilised our innovativeness to meet key requirements in the fight against the scourge. That capability continues to be sharpened and broadened to cover many other areas of national endeavour.
Theatre of innovativeness
Education 5.0 has served us well, turning our nation into a theatre of innovativeness. The launch of ZIMSAT-1 only under two months ago, and our embarking on assembling ZIMSAT-2, which is now underway, speaks of a nation breaking into new domains of scientific mastery. I want to pay special tribute to our universities and scientific community for generating far-reaching solutions to problems and challenges of our day and age. Such is the role of science and technology in nation-and resilience-building.
Achieving food security
While the conflict in Eastern Europe amply revealed global food insecurity, with many parts of the world facing serious food challenges, our nation used that conflict situation to horn and strengthen its food security systems. The exercise is far from complete, but remarkable strides have been made, as was amply demonstrated by the recent bumper wheat crop which got us to self-sufficiency in the cereal. With the aggressive strategy we continue to pursue in climate proofing our agriculture through investment in dam construction and modern irrigation facilities, I have no doubt in my mind that we will regain our bread-basket status in the next few seasons. We must aim to be food-secure, both in lean and plenteous years. Above all, we must strive to be a net food exporter in the region, on our African continent and even beyond. The broken global food systems must present our nation with a great opportunity to be seized. We have the land; we have built resilience; we are a hardworking, agricultural nation. Again, I thank our farmers for heeding our call to put shoulder to wheel.
From recovery to sustained growth
The Transitional Stabilisation Programme (TSP) and its sequel, the National Development Strategy 1 (NDS1), have seen our economy lurching from recovery to growth. We are now on a sustained growth trajectory, whatever the frequent shocks we encounter along the way, whether these are endogenous or exogenous. What the year 2022 revealed and stressed was the importance of quick, creative policy responses to any such shocks. The year also revealed that indiscipline and selfishness in the market must be fought with all vigour, and without fear or favour. There will always be bad players in our midst who deviously seek to profit from crises they either create or find in the economy or in the world. Where we have so many exogenous shocks hitting us in unremitting succession, such bad players increase and threaten our economic recovery and growth.
Bad apples will be removed
Even measures and facilities meant to assist the economy, such as the introduction of local currency, or the foreign exchange auction system, are wilfully distorted and hijacked to create mayhem in the market.
Such disruptions must be dealt with swiftly and decisively, so a clear message is sent to all players in the market that cutting corners or inventing them invites sure ruin. Going forward into the new year, Government will not hesitate to act whenever and wherever fair market rules are flouted.
Mining and manufacturing
On balance, the economy responded very well to the cumulative measures we took under TSP and NDS1. The manufacturing sector excelled remarkably, increasing capacity utilisation from as low as 30 percent or even below, to over 66 percent at present.
The Mining Sector has been a star performer, developing in a focused and targeted way. We are seeing expanded mining activity across the board, including in new strategic minerals such as platinum, lithium, oil and gas. Even old mines and operations are either re-opening or expanding respectively, thus creating many jobs especially for our youths. Artisanal gold miners have surpassed expectations, both by output and their integrity record on gold deliveries. More gold is now being delivered than ever before, the greater part coming from small, artisanal miners.
Building National Stock of Minerals
Our new policies of getting royalties part in cash and part in commodities, aim to see us stockpiling key minerals for the first time in our country’s mining history. Such mineral stockpiles can always be leveraged for critical financial inflows into the economy. This is critical given the harsh, illegal sanctions imposed on us by some Western countries who enjoy disproportionate influence on the global credit lending system.
Recovery of our Tourism
Our tourism made a phenomenal recovery from Covid-19-related setbacks. The sector’s resilience was on show when it used dead time during the pandemic to invest in new projects while expanding existing ones. Indeed I launched many such projects both in 2021 and this year. That far-sightedness which projected beyond the global pandemic, is now paying off. Zimbabwe has become such a preferred destination both for tourists and airlines that we are facing capacity constraints and bottlenecks we just have to address. I am aware of several greenfield tourism projects which will soon take off, thus improving and spatially dispersing our tourism product.
Devolution and even Development
Also salutary and making a huge difference to our overall performance has been the Devolution Programme. The impact of programmes and projects implemented under the programme has been positively felt right down to communities which now have a direct role in drawing up priorities.
Several infrastructures for social services, principally in key sectors of public health and education, have been completed in record time, thereby bringing these much-needed services closer to targeted communities. Devolution Policy has enabled us to spread development evenly across all the provinces which make up our nation, thus making sure no one and no community is left behind.
Modernising our roads
Our infrastructures have been receiving intense attention. The most noticeable of these has been the road subsector. The dualisation of the Beitbridge-Harare Highway is almost complete. The coming year, 2023, will see us embarking on the second leg of dualising this critical highway, picking it up from Harare to right through to Chirundu. Equally, we will start work on dualising the Beitbridge-Bulawayo-Victoria Falls Highway, itself an artery of our tourism.
Developing seamless border service
The modernisation of our highways has gone hand in hand with that of our border posts, starting with the Beitbridge Border. We are targeting Forbes, Chirundu and Plumtree in the coming year so our country becomes a veritable transport hub which geography has already declared it to be.
In the same vein, we have to revamp our entire rail network to enhance our inter-modal transport capacity. The open-skies policy we have adopted on air traffic should see us enjoy more arrivals which boost our tourism while we rebuild national capacity for air travel.
Challenges in energy sector
I would be dishonest to create an impression that the year 2022 has been without its challenges. It delivered a few headaches whose resolution we continue to work towards. One such challenge is that of energy and power.
The irony of it all is that this challenge has been bred by our phenomenal success in growing our economy and in attracting new investments.
The rapid growth and expansion in both mining and industry, coupled with new investment projects across sectors, has increased demand for power, created a clear mismatch between power generation and supply on the one hand, and power demand and distribution on the other. Nor has nature helped, what with climate change-related progressive decline in water inflows into our Kariba Dam, itself our biggest source of power. As I write, Kariba’s power generation capacity has drastically fallen from its installed capacity of 1100 megawatts to a mere 100 megawatts. Our capacity for thermal power has also fallen due to the aged six generators we developed soon after independence.
Taking extraordinary measures
Government has decided to treat this constraint with the same focus and intensity we accorded the Covid-19 pandemic. Extraordinary measures are needed and will be taken in the coming year. With the US$310 million we now have to refurbish and replace old generators 1 to 6 at Hwange, coupled with the coming on stream of generators 7 and 8 early next year, we should see an appreciable improvement in power supply early in the coming year.
We must now plan for our power generation and supply as if Kariba is discounted from our energy supply matrix, so we have at least 2000 megawatts from non-hydro power sources.
That way, we weather-proof our energy sector and with it, our whole economy. I have already instructed Government to remove all and any entry barriers to new investments in the energy sector.
Working towards peaceful polls
I have said 2023 is an election year. Preparations are already underway to ensure we have harmonised elections which are successfully run, and which are free, fair and non-violent.
While the first three goals are met through resources, laws and sound management of the electoral process, the last goal of violence-free elections depends on all of us, political actors especially. I appeal to us all to play our part to ensure our elections are conducted in a spirit of peace, love and amity.
We owe ourselves and our nation total peace, and nothing less.
We must shame all those within and outside our borders who have been investing in violence. Of course all our security arms will be out in full force to ensure peace in the country: before, during and after elections.
Merry Christmas Zimbabwe!
As this is my last weekly piece for the year, let we use it to wish you all a Merry Christmas, a Happy and Prosperous 2023. Let us exercise extreme caution as we travel during the festive season. We all must fight traffic accidents, so we do not continue to lose loved ones on our roads.
Merry Christmas and Prosperous 2023 Zimbabwe! – Sunday Mail
