By Tichaona Kurewa
The Zimbabwe Development Agency (ZIDA) is engaging government officials and local authorities in Matabeleland North on how to attract meaningful investments in line with the quest to boost the gross domestic product (GDP) for provinces.
The official opening of the Matabeleland North Investment Workshop in Victoria Falls this Monday, saw ZIDA confirming that it is on a drive to market investment opportunities in line with the natural endowments available in the province.
ZIDA Representative, Mr Never Nyemudzo said, “Basically, we want to make the province aware of ZIDA’s core-mandate in terms of investment promotion, licensing and monitoring. We want to make the province aware of the processes that are followed when they want to engage ZIDA for one reason or another. Basically, it is information dissemination from ZIDA to the province. We also want to understand the opportunities within the province.”
Participating Rural District Councils (RDCs) are upbeat about the benefits of the engagement.
Mr Fibion Ngwenya, Kusile RDC chairperson, noted, “This workshop will help us to market investment opportunities within the district such as timber and natural gas.”
“We have opportunities that we need to package such as Lake Front and minerals,” said Mr Joshua Muzamba, Binga RDC chief executive officer.
Dr Patson Mlilo, Bubi RDC CEO also said, “The workshop will be handy; we have gold in the district and agricultural land.”
Matabeleland North Minister of State for Provincial Affairs and Devolution, Honourable Richard Moyo encouraged participants to take advantage of the forum to learn more about packaging investment opportunities in the province.
“This workshop’s deliberations should therefore interrogate ways of tapping into the diverse endowments and create investment synergies which will help accelerate the growth of the provincial Gross Domestic Product. The fact that we are gathered here to unpack the investment opportunities and various economic activities from all our seven districts dovetails with the Second Republic Vision for an upper middle-income society by the year 2030, living no one and no place behind, being spearheaded through the implementation of the National Development Strategy (NDS1), our national economic blueprint,” he said.
Under the devolution agenda, each province has come up with its own provincial gross domestic product, whose attainment can be realised through such training programmes.
Natural endowments in the province include mineral deposits such as coal, gold, coal-bed methane gas, teak timber, lithium, and wildlife.
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