Zimbabwe President says no nation, however strong and mighty, chooses friends or dictates enemies for us

This past week our Treasury announced far-reaching policy changes which seek to right-set our economy for durable growth and buoyant activity in production. Treasury also announced a raft of safety nets we need to cushion our people in this phase of transition.

We have to protect the gains we have made so far, while preparing to scale up economic activity. Zimbabwe is defiantly in the middle of a bold, irreversible forward march, even against veritable external shocks and numerous impediments placed in her way.

The current turbulence in the global arena has not and should not dampen us; rather, it should spur us on, tickle creativity and bolster our resolve to emerge stronger and more resilient. We have what it takes, and strong partners ready to walk with us.

Our quest for greater, broad-based investments, both local and global, is beginning to bear fruit. We are now attracting capital from across the world, including from non-traditional sources. This ensures diversity and richness which come with different business traditions and cultures, thus challenging the bane of corporate inbreeding we have suffered from since Independence. Enterprises who owe their birth and business culture to the UDI era of monopolies, oligopolies and State protectionism, should sense that the operating environment is fast changing. Equally, Government’s expectations will be less sympathetic to gratuitous calls for repeated protection by corporates who intercept benefits from State support through extortionate pricing of goods and services. We have tried moral persuasion which some in business mistake for weakness. We may now need to devise new strategies which ensure the consumer is respected and benefits from opportunities availed to the market by Government through benefiting corporates. The foreign currency auction system has been the main vehicle for such benefits, which the consumer is yet to enjoy.

Zimbabwe must aim to be the country where diverse capital and business cultures meet and interact competitively, including with our own. Reliance on capital and business culture from any one market does not help us. It makes us vulnerable, especially in the current global environment of shifting competencies, attitudes, interests and alliances. We must cast our net wider so we get good investors and partnerships where gain in mutual.

Above all, we must angle for actors who share our vision of domesticating value addition and strategic value chains in line with our National Development Strategy 1. The key lesson from current global turbulence is economic sovereignty. We should break free from any limiting outlooks and linkages, including those foist on us by colonial history. We are not owned by any country, wedded to any region or hemisphere.

While we belong to Africa, our hunt takes us worldwide, in search of those inputs we need as an economy, as an ambitious people, and as a going nation. As we proclaimed at the beginning of the Second Republic, we are friends to all and enemy to none. We thus should not hesitate to push frontiers of friendship in all directions of the globe.

Our interests select our friends. No nation, however strong and mighty, chooses friends or dictates enemies for us. We respect all races, nationalities, peoples and nations of the world. We expect no less in return. This is why we engage and re-engage, hoping for and deserving reciprocity at every instance.

By President Emmerson Mnangagwa

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