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Enacy Mapakame recently in Bulawayo
Government is working on a cocktail of measures to enhance the transformation of small to medium enterprises (SMEs) into large corporates.

The policy support measures will ensure SMEs have decent work space, enjoy technology transfers, access markets through trade facilitation and financial support. This comes as the SME sector has proven to be a significant contributor to economic transformation and growth, especially at a time when big companies have been scaling down operations while others eventually closed shop due to a host of economic challenges.

Industry, Commerce and Enterprise Development Permanent Secretary Abigail Shonhiwa, said this will ensure the sector contributed more to the economy while also graduating from small businesses to large conglomerates as was the case with firms in India and Japan.

She also indicated Government was engaging CBZ for further partnerships to support and capacitate the sector.

“As Ministry, we are working on a number of programmes with CBZ to support the SMEs. I will not make an announcement now, but I believe we should be meeting again mid-year and will be seeing the fruits of the discussions with CBZ and Government is happy with the support they are already giving,” she said.

CBZ Holdings acting group chief executive officer Peter Zimunya, said the banking group had already identified areas of further cooperation with the budding SMEs. These include manufacturing, both local and the export oriented, mining especially solutions for small scale miners and beneficiation.

The financial services group was also targeting tourism, including medical tourism, services, construction, agro-processing especially for fresh produce and machinery, irrigation development as well as energy sector.