Chief Secretary leads Zim delegation to China

THE Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet, Dr Misheck Sibanda, is leading a high-powered delegation of senior Government officials to China to pursue and follow up on investment deals and other business opportunities.

The visit runs from January 14 to 22.

A statement from Dr Sibanda’s office confirmed the eightday visit.

“The Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet is leading a delegation of senior Government officials to visit China from 14-22 January, 2017 on a mission to review progress on the implementation of various e-Government projects, which include amongst others High Performance Computing (HPC) system and the National Data Centre. The mission will also focus on discussions and exploration of new areas of cooperation in health, agriculture as well as higher and tertiary education, science and technology development,” it said.

“The visit depicts the determination by Government of e-enabling its systems and processes to deliver quality services to the citizenry in a quick, efficient and effective manner. This comes at the backdrop of the meeting between His Excellency the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe Cde R.G. Mugabe and his counterpart, HE Xi Jinping, the President of the People’s Republic of China, on Monday, 9 January 2017.

“The visit will focus on accelerating the operationalisation of the projects agreed upon by the Government of Zimbabwe and the People’s Republic of China,” reads the statement.

Zimbabwe and China enjoy cordial relations dating back to the days of the liberation struggle.

The two countries want to take advantage of their excellent political relations to further economic ties.

This has seen Zimbabwe and China signing a number of strategic mega-deals covering all sectors of the economy in mining, agriculture and health, among others.

The good relations have also seen President Mugabe and the Cde Xi meeting twice in 2015