Work to restore property rights in progress

GOVERNMENT has started working towards restoring property rights to add impetus to attracting Foreign Direct Investment and rebuilding the economy, the Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Professor Mthuli Ncube, has said.

His sentiments follow decades of Zimbabwe’s isolation from the international community since early 2000s after the country embarked on the land reform programme, which saw some former white commercial farmers losing their farms. As a result of the exercise, Zimbabwe has been accused by the international community led by Britain and the United States of America of lack of respect for property rights.

Responding to questions on a recent ZBCtv current affairs programme, Prof Ncube said: “Frankly, Zimbabwe has made a lot of progress regarding wanting to restore property rights whether its 99-year leases or just respecting property rights and in terms of compensation (of former white commercial farmers).

“So, just by the act of re-establishing property rights on land and then also compensating farmers, that is key and we’re doing that.”

Government has said it was seized with raising funds from the fiscus to pay the farmers and that the new dispensation was open for constructive engagement with the international community.

“Government is very open, Zimbabwe is open for business, it is open for engagement and re-engagement. So, all these messages really speak to the fact that we’re willing to engage, we’re open to all our partners.

“We’ll embrace our partners because some of the things that they are saying are actually good for us. We actually want to do it for ourselves as I’ve said we don’t have to wait for them to prescribe things, these are things that in a normal economy it is desirous to become an upper middle income country by year 2030,” said Prof Ncube.

President Mnangagwa has articulated “Vision 2030”, which every citizen should embrace to transform Zimbabwe into a upper middle-income economy, with increased investment, decent jobs, broad-based empowerment, free from poverty and corruption by 2030. In order to achieve the above, the nation needs to attract both private capital by emulating same principles, which have made other countries great.

And based on history, the now developed economies have followed key principles such as accountability underpinned by meritocracy, the rule of law and protection of private property.

“If we are able to really establish property rights on the land side, then suddenly we have an asset and a liability in the form of payment for farmers; suddenly we have a balance sheet and then we can put that in a special purpose vehicle, in a land bank or even in Agribank, we already have an agricultural bank,” Prof Ncube said.