The president invites the heads of finance to talks | Daily News Byte

Prosper Ndlovu recently in Niamey, Niger

ZIMBABWE is poised to tap into available regional economic development funding packages to strengthen its industrial transformation as the country seeks to increase domestic production and contribution to regional trade.

President Mnangagwa disclosed this in an interview with the media on Friday at the closing of the African Union (AU) Extraordinary Summit of Heads of State and Government on Industrialization and Economic Transformation held in Niamey, Niger in West Africa.

During the high-level indaba, President Mnangagwa engaged with regional counterparts, shared insights on Zimbabwe’s economic transformation story and invited heads of regional financial bodies to visit the country for more detailed investment discussions and how Zimbabwe can access existing financial packages.

President Mnangagwa

This was after the leaders of the leading regional financial institutions — the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) and the African Development Bank (AfDB) — in their presentations during the official opening of the summit, outlined a chain of financial facilities that member states can use to boost their industrial capacity and increasing intra-regional trade.

Emerging from the lengthy closed-door meeting, President Mnangagwa said the quest for regional integration had been the subject of intense consideration by the continent’s leaders, and stressed the need to ensure that each African member state played its part.

He said that taking advantage of the opportunities within the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) must be embraced by all countries and that Zimbabwe, as one of the first signatories of the historic trade agreement, was already a step ahead of others in terms of positioning for continental integration.

By advocating rural industrialisation, encouraging value chain production modelling, strengthening agricultural production to replace reliance on imports, increasing infrastructure investment as well as embracing science, technology and innovation, President Mnangagwa said Zimbabwe was already addressing bottlenecks hindering economic growth and trade in the past. “I understand that in Zimbabwe, looking at the content of the discussion and the documents that were presented at the summit, it is pleasant because we have already accepted it at home,” the president said.

“Zimbabwe is focusing on all these factors, there is hardly any area where Zimbabwe is lagging behind. But in addition, the representative of Afrekimbank, Professor (Bennedict) Oramah and the AfDB showed several financial windows that are available that we were not really aware of.

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“After the meeting, I sent messages to both presidents that I would like them to come and talk to see how Zimbabwe can access some of the financial windows that they explained at the conference.

Financing industrialization in Africa and scaling up existing flagship programs as a new approach to strong industrial transformation were some of the key topics for discussion.

As such, President Mnangagwa said unlocking regional financial opportunities is most critical for Zimbabwe, whose development progress has been hampered by the continued imposition of sanctions by the United States of America and its Western allies.

Due to the sanctions, the country is unable to access new credit lines from global financial houses, while the country’s compromised risk profile frustrates foreign direct investment and smooth trade flow.

In his speech, Professor Oramah said Africa’s economic transformation will be defined by the level of access to finance to drive key industrial capitalization and growing trade within the region.

He further outlined several financial packages offered by Afreximbank, including Covid-19 mitigation support for central banks valued at around US$80 billion, support for procurement of key commodities such as fertilizer and trade facilitation, among others.

In a statement read by a senior bank official, AfDB President, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, said the whole of Africa must embrace the AfCFTA and challenged member states to wean themselves off reliance on commodity exports through value chain development.

Minister Frederik Schava

He said increasing agricultural production is a major opportunity for the continent and revealed that the bank has used up to US$25 billion to finance agro-industrial projects on the continent.

Dr. Adesina also said that the bank has funding to unlock new energy projects with a focus on climate adaptation, value chain industrial production and women and youth empowerment.

Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Dr. Frederic Shawa, who attended preliminary meetings ahead of the Heads of State and Government meeting, together with Minister of Industry and Trade, Dr. Sekai Nzenza, said the main discussions focused on several measures that member states could implement. to catalyze Africa’s industrialization agenda, in line with the aspirations of Agenda 2063.

“We examined critical issues relevant to the industrialization agenda, such as: the industrialization of Africa through the development of regional value chains, innovation, intellectual property rights (IPRs) and technology transfer for increased productivity,” the minister said in a statement.