ZIA targets local authorities partnerships

ZIA targets local authorities partnerships
Published: 17 August 2017
THE Zimbabwe Investment Authority (ZIA) is set to partner local authorities to enhance the ease of doing business and promote investment in their respective localities.

ZIA chief executive officer Mr Richard Mbaiwa said they have signed a memorandum of understanding with local authorities for them to actively play a role in attracting investment.

He told Business Chronicle recently that the initiative would see them working with local authorities both rural and urban.

"As ZIA we have an initiative of collaborating with local authorities both rural and urban.

"We have actually signed a memorandum of understanding with respective local authorities representative bodies that is the Association of Rural District Councils and the Local Authorities Association.

"We want to partner local authorities to promote investment to their respective localities so that they play a more active role.

"We are a national investment promotion agency and we believe that local authorities should play a more active role in terms of incentivising and attracting investment to their respective locations," said Mr Mbaiwa.

He said the initiative would see ZIA being involved in helping rural and urban authorities come up with investment promotional materials as well as training of officials in local authorities in terms of how to deal with investors.

Mr Mbaiwa also said they are grateful that the initiative to partner with local authorities has been welcomed by the local governance sector.

"We are quite happy that this initiative has been embraced by all the local authorities through their associations. We hope that going forward the initiative will gain momentum and we should be able to see mini investment promotion agencies in each local authority across the country," he said.

He said they would in future need to see local authorities promoting investment in their respective jurisdictions as opposed to ZIA running the investment promotion drive on its own across the country.

In 2015, Zimbabwe attracted $421 million in foreign direct investment down from $545 million in 2014 and still lags its regional peers Mozambique and Zambia who, despite registering significant declines, received $3.7 billion and $1.6 billion respectively in investment during the period under review.

Earlier this year, representatives of a Zimbabwe diaspora investment group based in the United Kingdom (UK) engaged ZIA on a possible business partnerships that was crucial in attracting the much-needed foreign direct investment whose benefits include foreign currency generation and employment creation.
- chronicle
Tags: ZIA,

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