His Excellency the President, Cde. Dr. E. D. Mnangagwa spoke about how the Government is investing and scaling up power generation and this in line with the attraction of investment in our country. We must attract investment in Zimbabwe and if Zimbabwe is open for business, which it is as the President has made it very clear through that mantra, we must invest in infrastructure, which allows investment to be able to exist. So the President is not just talking, he is demonstrating that we were not just talking about being open for business. We are putting the building blocks to ensure that those who are coming to invest have access to the power that they require. We must applaud His Excellency the President and the Government for that effort. He mentioned in his address that investment is going into Hwange to make sure that we produce more thermal power because we have huge resources of coal and we still have the time to make use of our coal to generate the electricity that we require.
At the same time, the Government has also been promoting the use of solar energy and we must continue to support the Government and His Excellency on the need to use solar energy. Here lies another opportunity that we are missing which I believe all of us as Zimbabweans, Government, Parliamentarians and the private sector should actually take the lead in promoting. If we walk around to see who are the biggest importers of solar equipment, solar panels, batteries, lithium and gel batteries, they are non- Zimbabweans, they are investors who are coming from the countries where they are manufacturing that equipment.
So where is the opportunity in the solar value chain for locals? For sustainable development to take place and for us to support the President fully in his vision, I believe that we need to make sure that there are resources being directed either by the Government or by industry towards the support of domestic retail industry, particularly where you are retailing imported products.
Madam Speaker, I cannot understand why it is not possible to make sure that the banks are given a particular amount of money or a fund is put in place where young people, groups of women, able-bodied men are able to access those facilities in order to import the solar equipment and we roll-out a huge solar energy system in our country. Again, as long as we are going to allow those who manufacture in their countries to come and also retail them in our country, we are letting go the opportunity of keeping that foreign currency that they make as profit in this country – we are allowing it to leave the country. It is their right when they have invested in the country to take that foreign currency out, but we can avoid it because there is nothing sophisticated about selling solar panels and there is nothing sophisticated about selling lithium batteries. Our young people coming out of colleges and universities are able to do that but what they require is an enabling facility to be able to do that. I think that we can support His Excellency’s vision through that specific focus where funds, either through the budget or through incentives to the financial sector, are put in place to make sure that they are accessed by locals who want to be in this business of importing and deploying solar infrastructure.
Madam Speaker, the President must be applauded for he spoke during his State of the Nation Address about the growth of the mining industry. He spoke about the $12 billion mining industry that we are targeting and we are seeing a lot of the work that the President is doing, commissioning new mines that have been revived, new projects – Greenfield projects and Brownfield projects. So we must applaud the President and his Ministers for the work that is being done. As we do this, we must support the President by ensuring that this $12 billion economy in the mining sector is not only shared by the big investors who are coming from outside the country. The Zimbabweans in the communities where these resources are coming from must equally see and benefit from that $12 billion economy.
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