Thu, 20 Jul 2017 08:34:49 +0000
By MAILESI BANDA
GOVERNMENT has finalized the drafting of the National Industrial Policy and the Local Content Strategy aimed at supporting investment in value addition through local resources, Commerce, Trade and Industry Minister Margret Mwanakatwe has announced.
The minister said the policies and strategies were aimed at facilitating increased citizens’participation in the economy.
She said the government was committed to ensuring it created an enabling business environment for growth.
Ms Mwanakatwe said it was imperative that the country remained more inward looking and efficiently employ domestically generated resources to address poverty, inequalities and constraints that hindered human development.
Speaking during the 2018 budget consultative meeting with local manufacturers in Lusaka on Friday she said they were committed to putting in place policies that would see the growth of the local industry.
“We will continue to enact policies and strategies that are designed to support investment in value addition building on available local resources,” she said.
She explained that the private sector had a significant role to play in generating local resources to address poverty and vulnerability that hinder human development as they were the drivers of the economy.
She apealed to local manufacturers to complement Government’s efforts in achieving the value chain cluster programme which supported the creation of value chains based on local endowments as contained in the Seventh National Development Plan which aims at ensuring greater economic stability, growth and job creation.
And Finance Minister Felix Mutati said the contribution of the manufacturing sector to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) this year was expected to be at the rate of 7.8 per cent adding that more needed to be done to ensure that the sector contributed more to the economy.
Mr Mutati urged manufacturers and the private sector to make use of the various policies that Government had put in place to help them generate more income and in return meet their tax obligations.
He urged manufacturers to adopt the culture of give and take, stating that this would help them give as much as government is giving to them and work together to ensure that the sector achieved a GDP of about 10 per cent.
“We are mindful that challenges remain with regard to cost of money, availability of money and also for a number of companies in the manufacturing sector, the ability to be able service their debt,” he said.
Mr Mutati said the manufacturing sector was a key contributor to economic development.
