President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Tuesday told Zimbabweans living in Rwanda that the economy is recovering due to the government’s reforms. Mnangagwa is in Rwanda attending the African Union (AU) Extraordinary Session of Heads of State and Government. Said the president,
Our industry is behind; most of the industries are, in terms of capacity utilisation, below 50 percent. We tried to improve the industry and commerce environment by introducing Statutory Instrument 64, which has done a lot of good.
We now know within the first quarter, whereas we would be spending something like $6 billion for imports against $4 billion exports, I understand now we have reduced the import bill by $2 billion as a result of SI 64.
But we still need to retool our industries because we still have obsolete technology in that area. But, as the environment has improved, our people, industry and commerce, as they expand, wanting more raw materials to feed the industries, there is demand for foreign currency and we don’t have that.
Of course for foreign currency, just this period of three months has grown by 23 percent, but even so, the import side has grown three times more.
So, the challenges we are facing are good challenges because they are challenges for growth.
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