Liquidity crisis: Zim needs foreign direct investment

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RBZ governor, Gideon Gono said the country requires FDI to solve the liquidity crisis and should not be seen as attacking the owners of capital.

RESERVE Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor, Gideon Gono said the country requires foreign direct investment (FDI) to solve the liquidity crisis and should not be seen as attacking the owners of capital.

BY MUSA DUBE

“The other way we can solve the liquidity crunch faced in the country is through attracting FDI,” Gono said in Bulawayo last week. “Among ourselves, we don’t have much and we have to bring in capital from somewhere in exchange of something, whatever we get. But we don’t have to attack the owners of capital.”

The country desperately needs FDI to rebuild and revive infrastructure neglected over the years.

Gono’s remarks could be aimed at the indigenisation policy which is set to spread its tentacles into the financial sector.

Gono said there was not going to be “an unstructured, chaotic or forced intervention in the banking sector outside technical agreement and legal way of doing things”.

“If you want to wake up saying I am now the RBZ governor, it’s fine with you, but you will only be believed by the gullible,” Gono said. “We cannot stop anybody from wishing and thinking, but let me assure you that things are going to be done properly with due regard to the dictates of the country.”

Gono and the outgoing minister of Youth Development, Indigenisation and Empowerment, Saviour Kasukuwere, have fought over the implementation of the empowerment law which requires that at least 51% of businesses with a net asset value of US$500 000 or more should be in the hands of locals.

Kasukuwere insisted that he was merely implementing the law while Gono argued that the one-size-fits-all approach did not work in the banking sector. Gono has said that RBZ would issue new banking licences to those willing to enter the sector.

The governor was in Bulawayo last week with leaders of the banking sector to ease the worries of the banking public on the possible return of the local currency after Zanu PF’s landslide in the just ended polls.

Speculation has been swirling that the new government would retrieve the Zimbabwe dollar from the recycle bin.

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