‘Zida does not discriminate between domestic and foreign investors’

Judith Phiri, Business Reporter 

THE Zimbabwe Investment and Development Agency (Zida) has said it does not discriminate between domestic and foreign investors, as they both play a crucial role and positively contribute to economic growth.

Zida is the Government’s investment promotion agency, responsible for promoting and facilitating domestic and foreign investment in the country.

Responding to a question on the country prioritising foreign investors more than domestic investors at the recent Unpacking of the Monetary Policy Statement Breakfast Meeting at the Zimbabwe International Exhibition Centre (ZIEC) in Bulawayo on Wednesday, Zida chairman, Mr Busisa Moyo disputed the claims. 

He said the Zida Act provides that they do not discriminate against local or foreign investors, revealing that they have added local investment in their strategy as a key area to look at what the local companies were doing. “Some of the biggest investors as well are private individuals building houses, setting up new businesses from coffee shops up to manufacturing businesses. So it is correct to say, perhaps we need to look at profiling, promoting and creating, maybe certainly how do we catalyse and how do we excite local investment,” he said. 

Mr Moyo said investment in productive assets is what was needed and setting up attractive incentives would ensure people open up the cash deposit boxes as well as be willing to invest in productive assets and manufacturing companies. 

“The question is how do we incentivise, promote local investors and get domestic savings into productive assets, because even some of the pension funds that are very large were built on the back of the manufacturing sector. 

“But if you look at what they are investing in, they are not investing in the manufacturing sector which is what the country needs. So, these are some of the issues that we have to talk about and balance, while we are open to that as Zida, a national agency,” he said. 

Meanwhile, speaking on the new currency, Mr Moyo said there was a need for the revenue authority, the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) to switch over its systems to ZiG. 

“I think now we are looking at the technical challenges that we have, bringing Zimra online so that the fiscalised machines can be linked to the ZiG system. 

“We were also talking about accounting issues, investors looking at our financials have had challenges because of hyperinflation, but now these will be going to a stable local currency, as a functional currency. So these are things we are hopeful that they will create a great improvement in the local economy, which needs to grow,” he said. 

Mr Moyo said once there is stable macro-economics, there was a need to quickly move to production and its expansion which was also the mission during the early days of the Zimbabwean dollar era. 

“So we need to go back to that, how do we expand production, how do we expand output, whether it’s agri-processing or mining, how do we build that so that we can employ more people, export more as a country and so that the Government is able to realise significant revenues,” he said. 

Mr Moyo said the Government also gets affected when business is low and when they cannot tax anyone. 

“So these are things that are being worked through in introducing this new currency. At the end of the month, we will have notes and coins that assist this currency. 

“I think the interesting thing the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) Governor, Dr John Mushayavanhu said, was that the total local currency that is in circulation is only 80 million and he’s got three times that amount. That’s very comforting, it’s a three times cover.”

He said business was pleased with the issue of transparency, information sharing and the fact that there were consultations before and after introducing the new currency.