According to reports “Government’s endeavor in this regard is to release shareholding in non-indigenous businesses in exchange for natural resources creating partnerships based on contribution of resource of capital in the measure reflected by the 51/49 percent law”.
Economic analysts say it is shocking that Government is repeating the same mistakes that have caused serious harm to the economy.
“It is the same mistake that was made with the land reform program. At first land was being acquired on a willing buyer willing seller basis and then they said they would pay for improvements, something that was never done,” economic analyst Takunda Mugaga.
Mugaga however said this proves that Government never had the capacity to fund the program in the first place.
“We know the Government has never had the capacity to pay for the shares. The problem is that there is no funding for the program and securing that funding remains a tall order for them,” he said.
Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce president Oswell Binha said he had not seen the official amendments but said he hoped that the press reports about the amendments were inaccurate.
“It might be premature for us to comment without having seen the amendments but if what we read is true then this is not what we expected. This represents a move in the wrong direction. We are expecting the opposite of what we are reading,” Binha said.
Binha said the chamber of commerce has deep reservations about the amendments.
“We have said we would like a participatory approach to empowerment. The current approach is radical, elitist with connotations of being distributive and not creating more wealth,’ he said.
Mugaga equated the proposed amendments to killing the companies.
“They will run down these companies like they have done to the state owned enterprises and they will end up just draining the fiscus,” he said.
Econometer Global Capital, a regional finance and economics research firm said in its banking sector survey for 2013 that indigenisation in that sector was a hot topic which raised emotions.
“In our polls, 94 percent of the interviewed CEOs believe indigenisation policy is not suitable at this juncture, 1 percent said they could not comment, the other 5 percent saw nothing wrong with the indigenisation drive as long as there is transparency in the implementation of the program.
“The 5 percent went on to argue that what is needed is to maintain management contract where the day to day management of banks is left to the foreign heads whilst equity can be transferred to the indigenous citizens,” Econometer said.
The economics research firm added that the 94 with reservations about indigenisation went on to buttress their argument by claiming that the banking sector in Zimbabwe is already well indigenised as evidenced by the number of banking institutions owned by black Zimbabweans.
Post published in: News