Herald Reporter
THE implementation of the Medium Term Plan has been hampered by lack of resources and poor performance of the productive sectors, threatening the achievement of set targets. The MTP was launched by Vice President Joice Mujuru last year and is expected to run until 2015.
Economic Planning and Investment Promotion Minister Tapiwa Mashakada, however, painted a gloomy picture on the state of the economy when he appeared before Budget, Finance and Investment Promotion committee on Monday.
“The economy is not growing — the economy has reached a plateau. We need a huge (financial) injection in our economy in terms of foreign direct investment.
“We need a huge injection in terms of foreign assistance, apart from this foreign assistance we also need to leverage on our resources.
“We are lucky that we dollarised because with dollarisation everything fell into place with little human hand involved. However, if the picture on the MTP one year on is anything to go by then we will have a mountain to climb to meet the MTP targets,” Minister Mashakada said.
Under the MTP the economy is expected to register an annual growth of at least seven percent until 2012, reduce the current account deficit by reducing imports and boosting exports and an annual employment creation of six percent. Minister Mashakada said a myriad of challenges were affecting the implementation of the MTP.
“From the outset the implementation of the MTP has been affected by the lack of fiscal space, policy discord in the inclusive Government, late disbursements of funds from treasury, slow implementation of the Public/Private Partnerships, delays by the State Procurement Board and lack of credit lines,” he said.