Zimpapers Logo

Tomorrow we say good bye to 2016 and for a good reason, many have little fond memories of the year and can only hope for a better 2017.

Notably, the year 2016 was rather difficult for politicians. Internecine fights in political parties and plots by the opposition became fodder for news readers.

The good news is that Zimbabwe continues to trudge on as a fully-functional and healthy democracy, regardless of the palpable economic difficulties the country is enduring.

Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa says that while challenges regarding the economy remained, they were not in any way insurmountable. Admittedly, the year 2016 can rank, quite easily as the most difficult year, economically, since Zimbabwe switched to the multi-currency system in early 2009.

Challenges in 2016 related to widening constrained fiscal space, current account deficit, liquidity crisis, unsustainable import bill and low industrial and agricultural production.

With production depressed due to a myriad of factors constraining business, viability of companies continues to be under pressure.

Huge volumes of imports continue to milk the little available foreign currency due to low exports, little foreign investment and the few external sources of foreign earnings.

Low agricultural productivity also negatively affects foreign earnings and the input supply line to industry, which again has to look to foreign market for key raw materials.

The difficult economic situation was also significantly affected by the El Nino induced drought, which ravaged Zimbabwe and many other southern African countries this year.

This situation has not been helped by a poor performance of key enablers such as transport infrastructure, utilities and energy, which inflated the cost of doing business.

But we should, however, draw some comfort from the robust initiatives, plans and policy measures that Government has already crafted to turn this difficult year on its head.

There is no doubt that a lot of effort will need to go into effectively implementing measures and programmes that the Government has come up with to address the problems.

Government is in the process of reforming the doing business environment to attract investment. The rapid results approach, on a 100 day basis has covered a lot in this regard. The Office of the President and Cabinet is spearheading the process.

Minister Chinamasa and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe are also working flat out to re-engage the international community and re-open sources of cheap lines of credit.

To that end, Zimbabwe has also already set the ball rolling, having cleared its long-standing arrears to the Growth and Poverty Reduction Trust of the global lender.

Government will amend and synchronise many pieces of legislation to drive investment and enhance the ease of doing business, in what should make 2017 a better year.

It will also create Special Economic Zones to boost foreign and local investment with drafting of legislation in this respect having already reached advanced stages.

Early this year, Government gazetted Statutory Instrument 64 of 2016 to control importation of products that could be manufactured locally. This already has a positive impact in a short space of time, lifting industrial production from 34 to 47.

It is partly in regard of this scenario, that as we wave goodbye to 2016, we can only hope for and strive to make 2017 a much better year, economically and politically.