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The virtues and successes of Zimbabwe’s consistent pro-investor policies since the advent of the Second Republic were brought home this week with Tsingshan Holdings, the largest of the new investors, making it clear that it wants to expand its investment in Zimbabwe.

This was formalised with the signing of an Addendum to the original Memorandum of Understanding, with Tsingshan’s Zimbabwean subsidiary Dinson Holdings, getting the green light to expand into cement manufacture and lithium mining.

The vote of confidence in the Zimbabwean investor climate is significant. When your largest new investor wants to invest even more money you are obviously delivering on what you promised, and from the beginning that has been the main plank of President Mnangagwa’s investor policy, converting the talk into action.

But from the Zimbabwean side we are also dealing with an investor who puts actions ahead of words.

We have had some investor inquiries, and even initial action, from those who simply want to lock up an asset, such as a prospecting permit or a licence, for speculative reasons, and have yet to make the plunge into production.

Tsingshan has shown it is the other type, following a continuous, steady and planned implementation of its investment programme. While the work on the culmination of the first phase, the building of the blast furnaces at Manhize for Dinson Iron and Steel Company only started this year for completion next year, Tsingshan has been busy since the deals were first signed, organising the production of raw materials and even putting in a significant proportion of the infrastructure it needs when it starts smelting steel.

So with its proven track record as an implementer, obviously the talks about extending the investment deal were rather easy to work out and implement.

This is the sort of investor we want, one who delivers. But at the same time we need to remember we won that investor because we have been delivering on our promises as well since 2018.

President Mnangagwa went to see Tsingshan chairman Mr Xiang Guangda in China soon after he launched the Second Republic.

Mr Xiang must have had queries, about how serious Zimbabwe was in implementing its recently announced investment policy, about how serious Zimbabwe was about stopping corruption, which can be a problem for a major foreign investor in a country where it is not hammered, and how serious Zimbabwe was going to be about ironing out difficulties that sometimes arise when a new policy and a major new investor are joined together.

The President must have been persuasive since the new policies were still being developed and implemented.

Mr Xiang decided the risks were acceptable and started moving in the capital in stages as he implemented his investment programme.

In some ways the implementation of the investment policies must have been partly driven by the need to ensure the Tsingshan investment went smoothly, and if so we have been fortunate to have an understanding major investor helping us, as a good customer, continue to craft improvements to our policies to attract others.

The new investments make sense. With the sort of economic growth we are seeing in Zimbabwe, and some of that growth also tied to major housing construction, dam building and road building, it is fairly obvious that our existing cement manufacturing capacity will soon need expanding. So there is demand.

The other point is that steel and cement share some of the raw materials, and even some of the waste products from a steel mill are raw materials for a cement plant. So once again both the company and the country win.

The entry of Tsingshan into lithium is another vote of confidence into Zimbabwe’s ability to move into the top league for this mineral. Tsingshan is already doing some mining of other minerals in Zimbabwe and is preparing the mining equipment for a lot more as its blast furnaces move towards completion.

Adding an extra one makes sense, and the choice is interesting. The company obviously sees a market. But having a major global conglomerate involved will help anchor the new mining sector.

One interesting point from the Addendum signing ceremony was the musing by Dinson chairman Mr Chen Shangsong about further investments, especially power generation.

Dinson is involved in sorting out its own needs, but there will be a market for someone wanting to take the independent power producer licences a lot further.

The Manhize mills will not just be boosting Zimbabwe’s exports and adding a lot of value to our iron ore, limestone and coke.

They will also be able to supply a widening range of downstream industries with the primary steel products they need to become established, let alone grow.

And someone needs to start doing the sums as to what those Dinson customers would consider a fair tariff to keep their factory lights on 24/7.

We are now getting some of the independent power producer licence holders to implement their schemes, but mainly at the modest end of the scale.

The holders of licences for larger stations have been a bit reluctant to start pouring cement and bringing in their machinery, yet the customer base is growing fast and most consumers are ready to pay rational tariffs that give the producer a fair profit.

Zimbabwe has seen some potential investors from the US and Europe being a little reluctant to come to the country as a result of the financial sanctions imposed by their governments, being naturally worried about moving investment funds in and then moving a slice of the post-tax profits out.

But as they see others, led by Tsingshan, earning fair profits, and with Zimbabweans as a result getting a lot of decent jobs and the Treasury collecting royalties and other taxes, they might be willing to add their pressures to those that want to see these sanctions removed.

After all we are not exclusive, although for a respectable, fair and committed investor like Tsingshan we will certainly make sure that no problem they might face is ever insurmountable, and our solutions then become part of the policy.