Failure on Special Economic Zones not an option: Gono

“FAILURE is not an option.”

This was a phrase that was popularised by former Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor Dr Gideon Gono during his tenure at the helm of the central bank.

Now Dr Gono, recently appointed chairman of the Special Economic Zones Board, has once again vowed that the Special Economic Zones concept will not fail. In fact, like in the past he has roared: “no amount of obstacle thrown our way or encountered will diminish our individual and collective enthusiasm for what we see as guaranteed success.”

Sunday Business Senior Reporter Dumisani Nsingo (DN) spoke to Dr Gono (GG) to get an insight into the progress his board has made so far as the country awaits to see what the Special Economic Zones (SEZ) concept will achieve. Below are excerpts of the interview.

DN: The Government has been leading in the call to set up the Special Economic Zones can you just give us an update on whether resources have been provided to your board to kick start operations.

GG: It is unfortunate that due to the current challenges affecting the country as a whole and Government in particular, Treasury has not been able to provide the SEZ with ANY funding whatsoever since the Board was announced on 26 June 2017. We continue to hope that the new Minister of Finance (Dr Ignatius Chombo) will be practical as opposed to lip-service to support this worthy strategic direction than has been the case so far.

The delays in providing funding have, however, not had any major dampening effect on the SEZ Board members who continue to soldier on using their own resource, be it for fuel, transport, airfares, hotel, stationery, advertising SEZ business or entertaining guests from outside the country.

DN: You still say despite the shortage of support you have set the ball rolling. What have you achieved so far in the 100 days?

GG: We set out to publicise the mandate of SEZ and raise its profile through deliberate media briefings. I think we achieved that even though it is an ongoing process. We also set ourselves to meet various stakeholders especially different ministers and senior Government officials to highlight to them our mission and where we think there is convergence or divergence in our operations. To date we have met the Zimra acting Commissioner and all his senior management to agree on modalities of our operations. We met the Governor of the Reserve Bank and his team, Zimbabwe Electricity Regulatory Authority (Zera) chief executive officer and their team, Ministers of Finance and Economic Development, Industry and Commerce, Office of the President and Cabinet, Mines and Mineral Development, Policy Co-ordination, Local Government, Youth and Indigenisation, Home Affairs. We are yet to meet other ministers and ministries. This is necessary because of the cross-cutting nature of our mandate. Our mission going round revolves around making sure everyone in the system understands where we are coming from, our expectations and to get an idea of their expectations too, so as to avoid confusion and unnecessary conflicts when we start the ball rolling.

DN: So where are you operating from? Where can someone go if he/she wants to get an insight of your operations?

GG: As for our physical addresses, whether in Harare of Bulawayo, Government is yet to give us offices from which to operate from or funding so we can rent operating places. Currently, for Board meetings we book the boardroom of the Ministry of Macro-Economic Planning and Investment Promotion who allow us to use their boardroom if they are not using it. But most of the operational meetings or meeting SEZ visitors take place at my private business offices in Central Avenue, Harare. That is also where courtesy call on the SEZ Board or correspondence is directed to, Robert House — my group of companies. I’m happy to be carrying in a very small way, Government’s responsibilities like any Zimbabwean in my position would do, hence not charging the Authority for use of these offices or for the ancillary services, photocopying documents, stationery, secretarial or teas. My board believes strongly that we were not set up to fail, hence no amount of obstacle thrown our way or encountered will diminish our individual and collective enthusiasm for what we see as guaranteed success. Failure to deliver promised results is not an option. We shall work until all personal resources are exhausted and I guess that is why some of us were recalled for this national duty.

We have also worked on the SEZ Regulations which are out there with various stakeholders namely the Law Society, Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries, Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce, various business chambers, Government Ministries and interested parties for comments. This we have done as a board without a Secretariat or help of paid sonsultants. We should see finalisation of these regulations by end of November.

DN: In August you also flighted adverts seeking to recruit a CEO. Who paid for those adverts if you are saying Treasury has not provided you with funds? How far have you gone in the selection process and if Treasury is aware that you are operating on zero budget how do they expect your Authority to discharge its mandate without a budget?

GG: Indeed we crafted the job description and specifications internally as a board without any assistance from outside or a consultant. Mind you, we are a board of experienced personnel and I believe we all work very hard. We flighted the adverts on 13 August 2017 with closing date of 1 September 2017. A total of 54 applicants responded and we carried out interviews over a two-day period 27-28 September and came up with a unanimous decision regarding who to recommend to the appointing authorities as the inaugural SEZ chief executive officer in terms of Section 22 of our Act. On 5 October, we wrote to the minister with our recommendations. We hope to receive feedback by mid to end of October so that the candidate can assume full time occupation of the Authority and take over the day-to-day running of the show from the chairman and also lighten the burden of my board members. As for the payment of the adverts, the total bill came to slightly $25 000 and as chairman I have been negotiating with various media houses and paying them bit by bit from my pocket. They have been very understanding. We are done with AMH, still to pay Zimpapers and ANZ in full. All of them understand our predicament.

You ask whether Treasury or our parent ministry are aware of our situation . . . well, believe me, there is not a single permanent secretary in the two ministries who is not aware of our situation as well as the two principal ministers. It’s just that there is limited fiscal space and some interesting bureaucratic hurdles we are trying to overcome since beginning of August, when the Board submitted its budgetary requests.

The Finance Committee of the Board should report progress soon if they succeed with the bureaucracy at both ministries and the Results Based Management (RBM) Systems which must be satisfied first prior to availing of resources.

DN: There is an outcry that your Board is not moving with speed and clarity. For instance, Bulawayo is not clear as to what exactly will be declared SEZ or is it the whole city or province. Can you shed some light, especially with respect to the status of Bulawayo?

GG: The SEZ board is heartened by the interest being shown in our mandate and its potential by the city fathers (and mothers) and the business community of Bulawayo. I wish the whole country was as enthusiastic and positive as is the case there. It is sad that for reasons outside our control, we cannot move as fast as we would want to but move we will, soon. It has to be appreciated though at the technical level that it is not possible at the initial stages to declare the whole city a Special Economic Zone. We will need to assess, in consultation with the stakeholders there, as will be the case everywhere, to determine and agree on priorities. It can not be all at the same time. We favour a sectoral approach to the implementation of our mandate, with a clear criteria that will ensure that we do not spread ourselves too thinly from an efficiency, cost and benefit points of view.

Critically, we favour areas that can be grouped together if possible, areas that have the highest promise for job creation, export generation, quick turnaround, easily up-scalable technologically; projects that show financial and economic viability as well as those having shorter gestation periods.

Additionally, SEZ declared areas must have adequate supply of water, a clear waste management game plan, consistent and uninterruptible supply of power so that we drive a 24-hour working culture where necessary and of course the logistics of raw material and finished product movement ought to be clear and assured.

To this end, we will be complementing Government efforts to attract investment that strengthen these logistics areas as well as bringing in investment that will once and for all, deal with Bulawayo and Matabeleland water supply situation. We pledge to see serious and very significant progress towards addressing this perennial water situation and our SEZ thrust will permanently deal with this issue.

I can speak very confidently that we will, together with the relevant arms of Government and investors, create a water-based enclaves of export productivity and job creation opportunities around all the proposed water bodies by 31 December 2020.

My message to the Bulawayo community and indeed the whole country is therefore that we are and have been dealing with set-up challenges and ensuring that we get our bearings right. We will blow the start-up whistle soon and we will give clear guidelines for each enclave. We are already working with a couple of investors from across the globe who will soon come on board once we are done with our admin issues as a Board and country.
DN: Thank you for your time Chairman.

GG: Welcome and let me remind you that again failure won’t be an option.