‘TSP brilliant roadmap to Vision 2030’

Source: ‘TSP brilliant roadmap to Vision 2030’ | The Herald February 20, 2019

Mr Jabangwe

Ishemunyoro Chingwere Business Reporter
The major industrial lobby group, Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI), has thrown its weight behind Government’s key economic policy, the Transitional Stabilisation Programme (TSP), describing it as a brilliant roadmap towards achieving Vision 2030.

The lobby group, however, said the roadmap needs to be robustly communicated to all stakeholders in the market to solicit for their support.

TSP was launched in October last year by Finance and Economic Development Minister Professor Mthuli Ncube and is running up to December 2020 by which time it should have provided a firm foundation for the attainment of an upper middle income status economy as expounded by President Mnangagwa.

Following its launch, Zimbabwe for the first time in a very long time, achieved a budget surplus of $29 million that came as a boost towards achieving a narrower budget deficit of 5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2019 from about 11,7 percent in 2018.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with Zimpapers Television Network (ZTN) yesterday, CZI president Sifelani Jabangwe said TSP is a blueprint on which Zimbabwe can anchor its economic revival prospects, but has not been disseminated as much as it should have been. He said while there were initial concerns from industry that there was not much consultation prior to the document’s launch, those that have read it have so far concluded that it is a step in the right direction.

“One of the challenges we have is that we suddenly woke up with it (TSP),” Mr Jabangwe told ZTN. “Not all of us have gone in-depth with it, you will find out that a lot of industry probably has not yet grasped the key concepts and what that document is about. We were actually planning to do some sort of workshop for our members to conscientise them of the contents (of the TSP),” he said.

Mr Jabangwe said despite not having been consulted exhaustively in the drawing up of the document, most of its key pillars augur well with industry expectations.

“We were actually, at one time, working on a document to say this is what we think we should have (from a Government policy perspective), interestingly we then found out that all we had been talking about was in alignment with TSP,” said Mr Jabangwe.

His remarks are in sync with Government’s quest to foster a private sector led economic growth.

Speaking in the same interview, public policy researcher Dr Tendai Murisa of SIVIO Institute, said the key to economic recovery is not in penning good documents alone, but making sure that Government implements it to the letter.

He concurred with Mr Jabangwe’s views noting that Government needs citizens’ buy-in for the programme in order to implement it successfully.

“What we have been short of is the implementation, the capacity to implement, but it’s not just the capacity but the buy-in,” said Dr Murisa.

“We are not so sure how widespread the consultations (leading to TSP) were (but) as a document, as a roadmap (to Vision 2030) its brilliant, no doubt about it but do we have buy-in from different sectors of society,” he said.

The Reserve Governor Dr John Mangudya is today expected to present his Monetary Policy Statement, further giving business direction to take as the country implement economic turnaround strategies.