Mnangagwa’s inaugural speech at Zimbabwe’s new president- in full

Our economic policy will be predicated on our agriculture, which is the mainstay, and on creating conditions for an investment-led economic recovery that puts premium on job-creation.

Key choices will have to be made to attract foreign direct investment to tackle high levels of unemployment while transforming our economy towards the tertiary. The many skilled Zimbabweans who have left the country over the years for a variety of reasons must now come into the broad economic calculus designed for our recovery and take off.

Of course, the physical and social infrastructure must be repaired and expanded to position our country in readiness for economic growth, employment creation, equity, freedom and democracy and for the provision of vital social goods, principally health, shelter, clean water, education and other key social services.

Our quest for economic development must be premised on our timeless goal to establish and sustain a just and equitable society firmly based on our historical, cultural and social experience, as well as on our aspirations for better lives for all our people.

Our system of economic organisation and management will incorporate elements of market economy in which enterprise is encouraged, protected and allowed just and merited rewards, while gainfully interacting with strategic public enterprises run professionally and profitably, all to yield a properly run national economy in which there is room and scope for everyone.

The fabulous natural resources we have as a country must now be exploited for national good through mutually gainful partnerships with international investors whose presence in our midst must be valued and secured.

The bottom line is an economy which is back on its feet, and in which a variety of players make choices and fulfil roles without doubts and in an environment shorn of fickle policy shifts and unpredictability. Only that way can we recover this economy, create jobs for our youths and reduce poverty for all our people who must witness real, positive changes in their lives.

In the immediate, the liquidity challenges which have bedevilled the economy must be tackled head on, with real solutions being generated as a matter of urgency. People must be able to access their earnings and savings as and when they need them. As we focus on recovering our economy, we must shed misbehaviours and acts of indiscipline which have characterised the past. Acts of corruption must stop forthwith.

Where these occur swift justice must be served to show each and all that crime and other acts of economic sabotage can only guarantee ruin to perpetrators. We have to aspire to be a clean nation, one sworn to high moral standards and deserved rewards.

Continued next page

(1888 VIEWS)