Let us kill the us and them syndrome

RemaRks by amH group CeO kenias mafukidze (pictured) at the inaugural Zimbabwee annual Investor Forum on Wednesday at Harare International Conference Centre. The event was organised by Zimbabwe Independent and PiggyBankAdvisor.

Your Excellency, President Emmerson Mnangagwa, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Frederick Shava, Deputy minister of Information Kindness Paradza, Zimbabwe Investment and Development Agenc acting CEO Duduzile Shinya, AMH editorin-chief Wisdom Mdzungairi, Zimbabwe Independent’s trail blazing first ever female editor Faith Zaba, AMH team here present. We salute you.

Introductory remarks

Your Excellency, allow me to welcome and thank you for coming to our inaugural Zimbabwe Annual Investor Conference.

Your Excellency, Ladies and Gentlemen, Zimbabwe is on an exciting growth potential guided by National Development Strategy (NDS-1) towards a middle income status economy by 2030.

As a media group let me state upfront with no ambiguity, we fully support this vision. Needless to say, Your Excellency, to achieve the 2030 Vision Zimbabwe requires high levels of strategy and synchronisation at national level.

I think there are four crucial areas we trust will be tackled in this investment journey. These are the issues we trust this event will focus on and address so we move forward.

Macro environment, exchange control

Your Excellency, currently Zimbabwe has the worst performing exchange in Africa at the moment. We must change that together.

We must stabilise the markets through reduction of policy volatility and shocks. We also need to shift payments decisions out of regulators back into the boardrooms and bankers.

Capital only comes into a country based on its assessment of how easy it is to get out. We must therefore smoothen our forex pay

From b2 ments methodologies within international settlement norms.

Long-term institutional investors like pension funds and asset management companies serve as potential sources of finance for sustainable development.

We must engage these actors and other players in the financial and corporate sectors to get them to make input into the conditions that enable them to invest.

State-owned Enterprises

These cannot be ignored. At their peak, parastatals and state-owned enterprises (SoEs) were an important cog of the economy, contributing an estimated 40% to Gross Domestic Product (GDP). SoEs, Your Excellency are double edged swords. If managed well they drive the economy, if not managed they easily become a deadly albatross.

Ladies and gentlemen, we must create sustainable long-term investment opportunities. This goal requires that we take a serious and critical look at our SoEs.

Your Excellency, please can we reform our SoEs more aggressively to flip them from being a drain to being a contributor.

Permanent secretary responsible for state enterprises reforms, corporate governance and procurement in the Office of the President and Cabinet Willard Manungo mentioned National Railways of Zimbabwe for example.

We must invest in it so that it takes advantage of our central regional location and becomes a key enabler towards Vision 2030.

Infrastructure

Your Excellency, the need for robust infrastructure cannot be over-emphasised. Over the last few decades as a country we have under-invested in this area. Our roads are in disrepair and our health facilities are in disarray.

Your Excellency, I understand there is no blood for transfusion in the country. If one is in an accident and you need blood. That’s it! We can and must do better.

We support the work being done on the roads. Yes, the tenure of financing structure needs to be aligned to the long term nature of the assets but at least we are moving forward.

We must continue to attract investment into infrastructure.

Need for coordinated unified approach

This conference is an effort by Alpha Media Holdings, PiggyBankAdvisor, the Government of Zimbabwe, relevant state agencies and also private sector players to rally behind the creation of an environment that encourages investment.

This event is not just to converse on these issues, but to fix them. We do not deserve to be a regional laughing stock.

This forum is a unique one as it advocates the scaling up of sustainable long-term financing and investment for key infrastructure that leaves no one behind.

Your Excellency, the objective of this forum is to improve public utilities investment options and financial literacy levels for the majority of our citizens while increasing the participation of individuals on local and global investment markets. This is done through robust debate on what we need to do.

The objectives of the Zimbabwe Annual Investor Forum are also aligned with NDS-1, which clearly outlines that achieving meaningful growth will require high levels of both foreign and domestic investments.

We trust that the forum will stimulate dialogue on critical investment issues as well as gauge the views of the various parties represented here.

As a listening government, ably led by you, Your Excellency, comments and suggestions on this platform will be key for policy implementation going forward. So Your Excellency, let me be clear.

This event is not a plea for you and the government to work on improving the environment. This is more of a pledge by the media and investment community that we are in this together. And the way we improve things is through listening to each other and acting collectively for our common good.

Let us kill the us and them syndrome — media versus Government of Zimbabwe, Zanu PF versus opposition and government versus private sector.

As the media, we aim to be a friendly mirror to put your act together. If as a country we do not enjoy the reflection in the mirror, we must resist the urge to break the mirror but instead focus on the source of image. Which is yourself!

Alpha Media Holdings and PiggyBankAdvisor stand ready to partner with government to make meaningful progress in the government’s quest to advance sustainable longterm investments options and sustainable development.

Your Excellency, thank you for coming through to listen to us and share your wisdom.

I thank you.