Source: Indian firms express interest in agric investment | The Herald January 5, 2017
Innocent Ruwende Senior Reporter
Several Indian companies are interested in investing in Zimbabwe’s agricultural and medical sectors, India Ambassador to Zimbabwe Mr Rungsung Masakui said yesterday.
Mr Masakui said this after paying a courtesy call on Acting President Emmerson Mnangagwa at his Munhumutapa offices.
The Indian envoy was seeking agricultural land for the potential investors from his country, as well as briefing the Acting President on other business developments.
The ambassador’s proposal comes as Government has introduced a raft of measures to improve food security and reduce grain imports.
Among the measures is the Targeted Command Agriculture scheme whereby Government supported farmers with irrigation equipment, inputs, chemicals and mechanised equipment to produce over two million tonnes of maize on 400 000 hectares.
In an interview after the meeting, Ambassador Masakui said Acting President Mnangagwa had assured him that Zimbabwe was open to investors in various sectors of the economy.
“This is just (a courtesy call) to renew and a follow up discussion of the meeting we had last time,” he said. “There has been some advancement in that discussion and also that in agriculture sector, we are looking for some piece of land, around 10 000 to 15 000 hectares to start with, for cultivation of sugar cane.”
COMMENTS
Interesting that Zanu displaced ZAPU farmers and then commercial farmers in the interests of the Scoones and Mugabe FTLRP – under the guise of indigenisation. In the process they destroyed the economy and about 300 000 jobs in agriculture. Now today – they have come up with a new Buzz Word – Command Agriculture. Command agriculture can be carried out by foreigners and expats because Zanu has looted, murdered, raped and tortured their very own citizens that were feeding the people. But this okay. Scoones, Kissinger and Carrington all anointed the Zanu terror and said that Mugabe was the best option for the country 37 years ago. These people do not seem to understand Peter Drucker’s managerial advice that “trying to prevent a corpse from stinking is an exercise in futility.” Zanu will run to anybody who will put their hands in the pockets for cash – it will interesting to see if HM’s Government throw good money after bad – along with the CFR, the UN, the EU, the US, the IMF ad the World Bank. Let us be real – these Zanu guys need some serious cash having tapped into Marange!! I wonder if Trump will come to their party?
Today is January 5th. There can be no serious new plantings of maize before November 2017. This being the case – there can be no serious turn around in home grown feed before June 2018. That is 540 days away. What – we may ask the nutty professor from Sussex – will the people of Zimbabwe eat in those 540 days?