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Ambassador Mubi

GOVERNMENT plans for weekly activity diaries on the country’s economic blueprint; Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation are plausible and deserve total support.

Ambassador Mary Mubi, director of public affairs in the Office of the President and Cabinet told a workshop on the Zim-Asset communication strategy last week that Government ministries will soon be required to submit weekly diaries to monitor progress on implementation of the policy for timeous corrective action where the need arises.

This comes as the economic policy is due for mid-term review at the end of this year to take stock of how much progress has been made.

It can only be for the OPC to take the initiative, for which it should be applauded, to dutifully execute its mandate of leading the implementation process to ensure the attainment of the targets set in the plan.

Government has in the past come up with many brilliant economic blueprints, which could have taken this economy to a whole new level, but failed partly due to laxity in monitoring, evaluation and control.

Therefore, the need for close monitoring and evaluation of the implementation of Zim-Asset cannot be overemphasised.

Zim-Asset is the blueprint that defines and guides the Government’s economic development programmes for the period 2014 to 2018 and lays the foundation for a robust and sustainable growth going forward.

It targets to achieve average growth rate of 7,1 percent during the course of its lifespan and therefore requires all stakeholders to keep their hand on the pulse or else it would be a tale of missed targets, again.

Having reached breaking point due to the of economic crisis that rocked the country over the decade to 2008, which decimated the gross domestic products by almost 50 percent, there is little room for error.

This is the case in light of the fact that Zim-Asset is oriented as a results based cluster programme designed to allow the Government to focus on priority projects with transformative impact on people and the economy.

The five-year development policy is divided into four main economic clusters of food security and nutrition, infrastructure and utilities, value-addition and beneficiation and social services and poverty eradication.

Zim-Asset was crafted to achieve sustainable development and social equity anchored on indigenisation, empowerment and employment creation.

This would, it is envisaged, be propelled by the judicious exploitation of Zimbabwe’s abundant and widespread human and natural resources to achieve the policy’s Vision of repositioning the economy on the path “Towards an Empowered Society and a Growing Economy”.

What makes it inevitably critical to avoid sleeping on the wheel is the fact that Zimbabwe lost so much ground due to the economic meltdown for almost a decade to 2008 and quickly needs to get back on curse.

Companies collapsed during that period and new jobs must be created, which is also critical for growth and stability in the future. Infrastructure and social services also deteriorated during that period and no time should be wasted to ensure that these start working again.

There is no prize for guessing that poverty eradication is the ultimate goal, and this can only be achieved if the general populace is empowered and partakes in the mainstream activities of the domestic economy.

While foreign investment is key for any economic growth across the globe, it must be said from the outset that strong internal policy programmes and full exploitation of the country’s resources will be key.

And monitoring, evaluation and control will thus play a fundamental role in ensuring that the key deliverables are met, especially, in light of the myriad of constraints the country faces, including financial limitations.