Industry has made recommendations to Government that seek to facilitate the implementation of Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (ZimAsset).

Articulating the resolutions of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries workshop on ZimAsset yesterday, Anthony Mandiwanza who was chairing the workshop said there was an urgent need to create clusters that will develop implementation matrixes.

The clusters, which should be effective by March, will report on implementation processes of the blueprint with specific outcomes.

Industry itself said it would play its part by engaging external sources of funding for ZimAsset.

"As business, we should develop a programme for engagement with multi-lateral groups. We need to have specific teams that will be assigned to go to different institutions and engage them so that we can unlock funding for ZimAsset," Mandiwanza said.

In order to ensure complete engagement with multilateral institutions, industry also determined that Zimbabwe should host an investment summit that will bring together potential investors.

The summit which is expected to be initiated by the private sector, but will be supported by Government will primarily market projects which have been earmarked for funding in ZimAsset. 

Government needs to raise US$27 billion to fund all the projects and the bulk of the funding is expected to be sourced from external sources. Deputy Chief Secretary in the Office of the President and Cabinet Christian Katsande said the budget would not be able to sustain all the projects in ZimAsset hence engagement with multilateral institutions would be ideal.

"We will approach development partners including the World bank, IMF, PTA bank, EU Development bank, Comesa and also investors from China and India who will share with us their experience.

"We believe we can make progress through that engagement," he said.

Industry also urged Government to launch ZimAsset in all cities across the country by the end of this month to create awareness.

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