Mnangagwa says Zimbabwe should be food sufficient in two years

THE VICE PRESIDENT AND MINISTER OF JUSTICE, LEGAL AND PARLIAMENTARY AFFAIRS (HON. MNANGAGWA):  Thank you Mr. Speaker Sir, I also want to thank the Hon. Member, the Vice President of MDC-T for the question.  I want to thank her for remembering what happened in 2015.  I feel very elated that she thinks that I should remember the decision which was taken at that time.   Mr. Speaker Sir, in terms of policy, I can assure the Hon. Member and the House that everything is being done in the various sub-sectors of the economy to improve the lives of our people.  In particular, coming to the situation of Zimbabwe, we believe that the primary challenge we are facing in this country which I believe everybody who is a citizen of this country would agree that we have a primary economy which is on the bedrock of our agricultural sector.

Everything is being done by Government and the public sector to support our agricultural sector so that we put behind the issue of continuously importing food, whether there is good season in terms of rain or there is drought.  We have now put measures to make sure that there is food sufficiency in the country.  We wish to accomplish this goal within the next four seasons.  There are two seasons in a year, this means in two years’ time, we shall have accomplished that area.

Then the other areas which are directed to dealing with the question of alleviating or eradicating poverty among the people; we have various sectors of the economy which deal with those issues.  Obviously, the economy is not performing well but everything is being done by Government, private sector, public sector and parastatals to do our best under these circumstances to make sure we improve the lives of our people.

In the area of infrastructural development, I am sure colleagues are fully aware about the projects that are underway which are unfolding in the infrastructural development sector.  We are also fully aware about what is happening in the area of tourism.  We have just completed the runway at Victoria Falls which now is going to be able to take on board bigger planes to land.  As a matter of fact, China alone has something like 250 million tourists per year which is expected to grow to 600 million by 2020.  If we structure our tourism with countries of that nature and various other countries worldwide, we believe that now with the runway which we have completed, we should be able to improve our tourism sector.  As a matter of fact, the indication and projection of that sector shows growth.

Mr. Speaker Sir, we also go into the areas of manufacturing and ICT.  We are attending to all these areas in order to improve the lives of our people.  More-so, we will continue to make sure that the areas of health and education receive full attention and we hope to receive cooperation from all citizens of this country.

I am aware that this subject is at the heart of the former Deputy Prime Minister because when he was Deputy Prime Minister, she used to champion this sector very ably and I still recognise that you have not forgotten this thing which you were championing at that time.  I thank you.

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