Zimpapers Logo

The Herald, 1 October 1980

ZIMBABWE’S economy needed to be restructured to ensure that growth was accompanied by equal opportunities for all, the Minister of Economic Planning and Development Senator Bernard Chidzero, said yesterday.

He told a luncheon meeting of the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators at a Salisbury hotel that the Government could not afford to continue the present economic path of “growth without equity”.

The urgent need now, he said, was to ensure the country’s resources were fully utilised to transform the rural areas — where most of the people lived — so as to remove the imbalance in the distribution of the national cake.

Dr Chidzero, a former deputy secretary-general of the United Nations’ Conference on Trade and Development, urged his audience to help the Government in this task — to act as instruments of change and not jealously guard their own interests.

He referred to a UN document, published recently, on Zimbabwe’s economy: “Towards a New Order: An Economic and Social Survey, and said its recommendations were still subject to Government’s scrutiny, choice or even rejection.

He called on the administrators to face the future with courage and determination and strive to create equal economic opportunities for all Zimbabweans.

LESSONS FOR TODAY

Prior to Zimbabwe’s Independence in 1980, there were unequal opportunities between blacks and whites in the economic front in particular. After Independence, whites wanted to maintain the status quo, but the new Government could not entertain that.

The coming in of the new Government meant that the economy had to take a new trajectory, which was growth with equity. This meant that the marginalised poor in the rural areas were to have equal opportunities in the distribution of the national cake.

The Second Republic under President Mnangagwa has the Vision 2030 policy, which strives to create a middle income economy by 2030. It is hoped that despite the illegal sanction regime and the Covid-19 pandemic, the economy will grow and achieve Government’s objectives.