GMI to hold infrastructure summit

Local Government, Public Works and National Housing Minister July Moyo will grace the summit.

ZIMBABWE will next month hold a Infrastructure summit to discuss ways of developing and revamping its infrastructure, which has been run down through years of economic mismanagement.

Ngonidzashe Dzirutwe, the Global Renaissance chief executive, said the summit seeks to discuss funding models for infrastructural development particularly privatisation in boosting development.

“The summit is set to promote and motivate the government officials towards creating good infrastructure while attracting foreign direct investments from project funders and encourage local funding participation,” he said.

The southern African country has spent a paltry $2 billion, cumulatively, on critical infrastructure between 2009 and 2016, an amount, analysts say, should have been spent on an annual basis.

Dzirutwe said has good and sufficient infrastructure resources will automatically lead to economic growth and industrialist will be drawn to Zimbabwe.

“We want to achieve oneness to local development, promote information dissemination, consultative policies, local government to upgrade the standards and provide low cost housing, lure foreign and local funders, to ensure local contractors are in tune with international developments, promote the fast development of new Harare to alleviate housing shortages, to encourage easy of doing business and establishment of functional economic zones,” he said.

Among projects to be discussed is the Beitbridge – Harare – Chirundu road where the tender to dualise the highway has been on the drawing board for the past 16 years.

It was initially awarded in 2002 to ZimHighways — a consortium of local companies — but the company failed to implement the project for over a decade.