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Mnangagwa Set To Launch New Economic Blueprint Today, Will It Work?
16 November 2020
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Paul Nyathi

Emmerson Mnangagwa

The National Development Strategy 1 (NDS1), a new economic blue print crafted by Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube is expected to be launched today by President Emmerson Mnangagwa.

NDS1 will succeed the Transitional Stabilisation Programme (TSP), which ran from October 2018 to this year.

The third step will be National Development Strategy 2 to be implemented from 2026 to 2030.

On Tuesday last week, Cabinet approved NDS1.

The blueprint will run under the theme “Towards a Prosperous and Empowered Upper Middle Income Society by 2030”.

Some of the 14 priority areas are: economic growth and stability; food security and nutrition; governance; moving the economy up the value chain and structural transformation; human capital development; environmental protection, climate resilience and natural resource management; housing delivery; ICT and the digital economy; health and well-being; transport, infrastructure among others.

Employers Confederation of Zimbabwe president Dr Israel Murefu said there was need for NDS1 to provide comprehensive measures to support industry given the shocks suffered by the measures required to contain Covid-19.

“We expect any measures to be taken to be comprehensive enough to enable economic turnaround and consequently business recovery so that we mitigate the damage caused by Covid-19,” he said.

“We also expect policy consistency to enable business planning and management of costs which, if not contained, could threaten its survival.”

Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development executive director, Janet Zhou, praised the NDS1, but wanted Government to push hard on public-sector led growth.

“We need to focus on public-sector reforms and public-sector led growth where previously and history tells us that our public sector used to contribute up to 40 percent of gross domestic product,” he said.

“Most vulnerable people in Zimbabwe rely on these public institutions. We need to see the intention of NDS1 in terms of reviving the public institutions, poverty issues, food security, housing, shelter and all the constitutional rights.”