Bank delegation expected

Industry and Commerce Minister, Professor Welshman Ncube, said the commissioners were expected to help the Government come up with ways of assisting industries in opening lines of credit to finance their activities which is key to industrial growth. They will be meeting us as ministry as well as business community so that we can present to them in the fullest sense the needs of the business sector.

Prof Ncube said the visit by the commissioners sought to help the country secure permanent funding for its industries in the quest for economic revival. He said the Government was in negotiations with both regional and international financial institutions to convince them to lend money to industry. The current problem our industries are facing today is the issue of finance. They cannot access loans from financial institutions that are still reluctant to inject funds to the business. At the moment finance is one of the most fundamental factors to our economic revival and that is the reason we have increased our negotiations with such organisations to convince them to assist companies.

Last week (a fortnight ago) I had a meeting with ADB and Afrexim where they agreed to send commissioners to come and meet business people as well as financial institutions to tackle the problem of finance, said Prof Ncube. He said the visit was crucial in the sense that it would present an opportunity to the business people to say their challenges with regards to finance, which was affecting their operations.

Ncube said although some local banks had started giving loans to banks, they were, however, short term and expensive. As a ministry we have done our deliberations and realised that the problem of finance was the single most important issue that we have to address, he said.

He said the countrys industrial sector was slowly improving and noted that if it got financial assistance, its operations would improve dramatically.