THE Government has facilitated the implementation of at least 10 major projects in line with the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation economic blue print although funding to implement all projects is now estimated at $30 billion.A paper titled Zim Asset Progress, Update and Challenges presented by the Principal Director, Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation in the Office of the President and Cabinet Mr Albert Chikondo during the Chamber of Mines annual general meeting recently, indicated that most of the projects were in mining and power generation.
The Office of the President and Cabinet was given the mandate to monitor the implementation of the blue-print.
Mr Chikondo said one of the major success stories was the New Zim Steel project in Kwekwe which has seen the Government finally agreeing with Indian conglomerate’s Africa group Essar Africa Holdings to revive the steel maker. The group has agreed to revive the giant steel company and set up a 500 000 tonne steel plant at a cost of $650 million.
“Project implementation is under way to refurbish the plant and the transfer of Ziscosteel employees under New ZimSteel in progress,” he said.
Mr Chikondo said Government had also established Diamond Cutting and Polishing Centres, and gazetted a Diamond Bill as work was in progress to add value to diamonds.
Value addition is one of the major goals of Zim Asset.
“A Diamond Centre has been approved and site incorporated in the development master plan of Mount Hampden,” he said.
Another project in the mining sector include efforts that are already under way to set up a platinum refinery to add value to the mineral. At the moment, Zimbabwe, in spite of being the second largest platinum producer in the world, does not have a platinum refinery.
Mr Chikondo said Government was in the process of sifting through plans by investors who had expressed the desire to set up the refinery. Some of the companies that have indicated that they intended to set up the refinery include South African Implats which owns Zimplats, Mwana Africa, RioZim and investors from as far as Russia.
“Government has also implemented the 20 percent export levy on raw PGM from 1 January 2014,” he said, as a way of forcing platinum miners to quickly set up a refinery.
The energy sector, said Mr Chikondo, had seen a number of projects with Government having secured investors to expand the Hwange Power Station where Chinese Sino-hydro was given the green light to implement the project.
Government has also signed another deal to expand the Kariba South Extension which is set to boost power generation to 1 050 megawatts per day from around 750 MW.
“Project implementation has commenced and civil works for campsite and access roads are in progress.”
He said Nampower from Namibia and another company from India were developing the Bulawayo Power Station while three companies, China Jiangxi, Intratek and ZTE won a tender to set up a 100 MW solar plant in Gwanda.
Another company, De Green Rhino Energy Solar PV Power Plant, has won a tender to set up a 150 MW plant in Marondera.
However, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Deputy Governor Dr Kupukile Mlambo said the country needed more than $30 billion to see through all the projects in the economic blue print.
“I have heard that we need $27 billion but in fact according to our own calculations the figure is actually $30 billion,” he said.
The energy sector alone requires $13,641 billion, followed by transport that requires $8,810 billion. Agriculture needs $2,799 billion while water and sanitation requires 3, 971 billion. The manufacturing sector needs $974 million, mining $305 million, Information, Communication Technology $377 million while health requires $24 million.
He said since the country was not able to access funds from international financial institutions, it could raise money through the local banking sector, the stick markets, non-banking institutions and through securitisation.
“The Diaspora is also another source of funding which we can tap into. Diaspora remittances have doubled from $198 million in 2009 to $454 million last year.”