By Wisdom Mumera
(News Of The South) – Harare – Discordant policies have been cited as some of the impediments to the progression of Zimbabwe`s economy, a Scientific and Industrial Research and Development Centre (SIRDC) study has revealed.
This was revealed in the latest findings from a SIRDC research carried out from last year up to January 2014 and presented at an Industrial Value Chain Diagnostics Studies workshop held at the Rainbow Towers on Thursday.
All presenters of the main findings in Chemical Industries Value Chain, Agro and Beverages Industries Value Chain and Engineering and Metals Industries Value Chain concurred that an absence of synchronization in policies was working against economic development.
“There is need to re-evaluate policies and synchronize them to the bigger picture, seeing to it that across the different Ministries the same legislation holds”.
“Importation of machinery is taken to be a form of capital by the Ministry of Commerce yet at the border when one needs to enter with it ZIMRA demands the payment of duty”, the study states.
This it says shows a disparate course of direction which can work against an improved economy.
“Therefore there is need to synchronize policies, improve energy and water infrastructure and also an investment in industry machinery most of which is very old”
“The majority of the machinery in the local industry is so old that it can only operate up 75 % efficiency and that coupled with the fact that most of which is also manually operated, means that the needed re-industrialization will take long if we don’t introduce new machinery”.
Most of the local industry has been operating at way below capacity due to an influx of operational problems, gross mis-management and financial misappropriation.
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