‘We need to tackle climate risk’

From B6

MC: You have indicated that you received an application for offshore investments. What are the numbers looking like?

GM: At the moment we are sitting on two applications. We approved an offshore investment guideline so pension funds can now invest offshore to preserve value.

e process is that they must come to Ipec for a letter of support and we look at the investment they are going into then they go to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ). We have now constituted a committee between Ipec and RBZ to consider these applications. Investing offshore does not mean it is a good investment. You can lose money so we want to take it through our test to ensure that the investments are credible and are good investments.

At the moment we have one for US$14 million and another for US$5 million. If I am not wrong we have already approved one from both ends and the other is still pending.

ere is a huge appetite but the challenge is to identify investments.

ere are some who are just flyby-night and are only coming to Zimbabwe because of the availability of US dollars. So you need to really make sure they are authentic because these are pensioners’ monies. e government has been encouraging these people to invest