President Robert Mugabe has given foreign companies until next year to submit their empowerment proposals signifying that indigenisation is not dead.
There had been wide speculation that the controversial policy, under which foreign-owned companies with a value of $500 000 and above should cede 51 percent of their ownership to locals, had been abandoned after Zimbabwe started seeking accommodation with the West.
But Mugabe is said to have made in abundantly clear that Zimbabwe won’t share its natural resources with anyone.
“There are companies in this country that still refuse to accept our empowerment policy in the mining sector. Well, this is 2015 and, of course, we are in December, the end of year but certainly come January and it's 2016, that stubbornness and resistance we say should end in 2015. In 2016, we will not accept a company which refuses and rejects our policy of indigenisation and empowerment in a manner in which we described," he was quoted by The Herald as having told the just ended Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front annual conference in Victoria Falls.
"Some have been crying that sanctions, sanctions, that you are too hard, why don't you accept what the Americans say, what the British say. No, we have our own philosophy, ideology and we believe that our natural resources are our own. We don't share them with anyone else except ourselves."
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