Overall, our solution is rural industrialisation. We must create and attract industries to rural areas to underpin the current countrywide drift towards greater urbanisation. To that end, factor endowments and gainful economic activity in given regions and areas should become nucleus of rural industrialisation. We have adopted clear value chains across all sectors. These must now be interrogated and adapted for each region, so rural industries are built to beneficiate and create employment at growth points. Growth points are exactly that: nodes of rural economic growth through industrialisation. Only that way do we have real and durable provincial GDPs we envisage under our Devolution policy and programme.
Secondly, it has come to my attention that our approach with regards to recording provincial GDPs may not be the best. It is centrally managed and deductive or extrapolative. It does not describe and capture real economic and social activity on the ground in respective provinces. We have to reorganise our structures to ensure there is a correct and accurate reading of economic activity in each and every province. Government is studying that critical area so our provincial structures have sets of skills which competently handle that broad assignment across provinces. In the final analysis, our provincial GDPs are as accurate as the data that we capture and use in rendering them. Our structures should always be interrogated and tested to make sure they speak to tasks on hand.
Lastly, let me assure all our ratepayers in towns and cities that my Government has irrevocably started to repair and rehabilitate all infrastructures and amenities neglected or broken by municipalities under the control of the opposition. The situation in our towns and cities had deteriorated to deplorable levels. Lifestyles had backslided to near-rural ones. We have to arrest that, restore and give back the shine to our towns and cities.
With the Gwai-Shangani Piped Water Project whose construction has now started in earnest, Bulawayo’s water woes should be resolved conclusively before 2023. Along the way, that pipeline will be depositing water, to turn Matabelaland into a sustainable green belt.
My working visit to Matabeleland only two weeks ago revealed appalling vandalisation of infrastructure in our country. This is particularly so in respect of infrastructure for our national electricity grid. This vandalism, which has also affected Epping Waterworks in Nyamandlovu, must come to an end. I warn those dabbling on the wrong side of the law that we will catch up with them quite soon. They will only have themselves to blame. They are drawing us back.
Happy 42nd Independence Anniversary Zimbabwe!
By President Emmerson Mnangagwa for the Sunday Mail
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