CEOs challenge Govt to fix Zimbabwe’s economic fundamentals

LIVINGSTONE MARUFU

Business leaders have urged the government to confront Zimbabwe’s structural economic challenges with honesty and policy discipline, warning that headline macroeconomic gains will remain meaningless unless they translate into tangible improvements for companies and households.

Despite recent progress, including single-digit inflation, an exchange-rate premium below 20% and economic growth estimated at around 6.6%, executives say these indicators have failed to improve living standards, halt company closures, or stem a wave of delistings from local capital markets.

CEO Africa Roundtable chairman Oswell Binha said the country must move beyond political rhetoric and policy symbolism if it hopes to position itself within Africa’s economic renaissance.

“If Zimbabwe is to be taken seriously within the African economic renaissance, we must confront the uncomfortable fundamentals without mantras, without spin, and without policy theatre,” Binha said.

Ceo Africa Roundtable will host a three-day Policy Roundtable, scheduled for March 18 to March 21 in Victoria Falls, which will bring together policymakers, business leaders and economists to examine structural weaknesses undermining Zimbabwe’s growth prospects.

Binha said the gathering would not be a ceremonial event, but a high-level policy forum designed to build trust, align priorities and drive practical solutions.

“We are convening not for rhetorical convergence but for actionable partnerships, policy coherence and measurable delivery,” he said.

At the centre of the discussions will be what Binha described as the “triple evils” throttling industrialisation — low domestic savings, weak investment and punitive borrowing costs.

“These are not incidental,” he said. “They are consequences of historical financial sector disruptions, policy inconsistency, weak institutional stability and an underperforming pipeline from reform to implementation.”

Binha also questioned the quality of Zimbabwe’s economic expansion, arguing that growth has not been inclusive or employment intensive.

“The headline growth estimate of 6.6% in 2025 masks an uncomfortable truth,” he said.

“It has not been employment-intensive and has failed to shift the needle on poverty and inequality. This is a growth narrative without social dividend.”

Zimbabwe’s rising debt burden was also flagged as a critical risk to macroeconomic stability.

Public debt is estimated to be just above US$23bn, including roughly US$10bn in domestic obligations.

Binha warned that without a credible debt management strategy and predictable monetary policy, the economy would remain trapped in a cycle of high-risk pricing and shallow capital markets.

“Without a transparent debt strategy, disciplined fiscal anchoring and predictable monetary policy, the economy will remain locked in high-risk pricing, shallow capital markets and chronic short-termism,” he said.

Energy shortages were also highlighted as a major constraint on industrial productivity.

According to Binha, persistent bottlenecks across generation, transmission and distribution have effectively normalised power outages and forced companies into costly self-generation.

“These constraints have been tolerated for too long, suppressing capacity utilisation and undermining industrial competitiveness,” he said.

The roundtable will examine why repeated interventions in the power sector have failed to deliver scalable solutions and will push for long-term bankable investment frameworks.

Binha also criticised Zimbabwe’s current approach to infrastructure financing, describing it as structurally flawed.

“The continued reliance on recurrent budget resources to fund long-term capital infrastructure reflects a fundamental intertemporal mismatch in public finance management,” he said.

Infrastructure assets, he argued, are long-cycle productive investments but are being financed through short-cycle tax revenues designed primarily for consumption and service delivery.

“This approach crowds out essential expenditure weakens fiscal space and results in stop-start project execution characterised by cost overruns and incomplete infrastructure assets,” he said.

In effect, he said, Zimbabwe is attempting to fund intergenerational capital formation through annual operating revenues — an arrangement that is neither sustainable nor economically efficient.

The situation is compounded by the underdevelopment of structured infrastructure financing mechanisms such as infrastructure bonds, credible public-private partnership frameworks and capital market mobilisation.

Pension funds, insurance capital and diaspora savings remain largely untapped due to currency instability, weak project preparation and limited pipelines of bankable projects.

Without credible project finance frameworks and deep capital markets, Binha warned that Zimbabwe’s infrastructure programme risks remaining budget-constrained and structurally underfunded.

While Zimbabwe’s Education 5.0 model holds promise, Binha said its impact has yet to translate into tangible economic productivity.

“The gap between curriculum ambition and labour market outcomes remains wide,” he said.

Graduates, he argued, are not yet being converted into productive enterprises or industrial capacity at the scale required to transform the economy.

Similarly, digital transformation initiatives — particularly around artificial intelligence — risk remaining superficial without a coherent national skills strategy.

“Artificial intelligence cannot be reduced to speeches and pilot projects,” Binha said.

“It requires a serious national skills strategy, incentives for industry-academia collaboration and a commercialisation pathway that converts research into products, firms and exportable solutions.”

Climate vulnerability was also identified as a major economic risk.

Binha warned that climate change continues to be treated as a seasonal challenge rather than a structural threat to growth, particularly in agriculture — one of Zimbabwe’s most economically significant sectors.

Without scaled climate-smart systems, including irrigation, water governance, data-driven farming, insurance and resilience finance, every drought risks becoming a macroeconomic shock.

“The Roundtable will challenge the absence of scaled climate-smart systems,” he said.

“Without these, every drought becomes a macroeconomic event.”

Chief economist at the CEOs Africa Roundtable Tatenda Nyachega said the forum would focus on confronting longstanding structural issues that have persisted for decades.

“These realities include low savings, low productivity, weak employment creation and low confidence in the monetary system,” Nyachega said.

“These are well-known challenges. The question now is how Team Zimbabwe responds with sustainable solutions.”

He added that discussions would also examine recent monetary policy developments, including the impact of taxes such as the Intermediated Money Transfer Tax and the cost of bank credit on businesses.

Zimbabwe is seeking to transform into an upper-middle-income economy by 2030, but Binha warned that persistent policy inconsistencies risk undermining that ambition.

“Zimbabwe stands at a pivotal juncture on the road to Vision 2030,” he said.

“Yet we continue to confront policy paradoxes — development frameworks that are often misunderstood, poorly administered and insufficiently calibrated to our institutional realities and economic structure.”

The 2026 Policy Roundtable, he said, is designed to disrupt that pattern.

Held under the theme “A Spirit of Dialogue: Partnering for Vision 2030,” the event will focus on building locally grounded policy solutions and closing critical implementations.

“Zimbabwe can no longer afford polite diagnosis while binding constraints remain intact,” Binha said.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa is expected to officially open the conference, while Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor Dr John Mushayavanhu will address monetary policy issues and the future of the country’s currency architecture.

Several cabinet ministers and industry leaders are also expected to participate, alongside technology expert Professor Arthur Mutambara, who will discuss artificial intelligence and digital transformation, and economist Professor Gift Mugano, who will interrogate fiscal-monetary policy coordination and institutional reforms needed to restore macroeconomic credibility.