There is a need to identify local potential investors in Bulawayo to resuscitate the industrial sector, ward 9 councillor Donaldson Mabutho has said.
Bulawayo used to be the country’s industrial hub, boasting giant industrial operations such as the Cold Storage Company (CSC), engineering company ZECO holdings, Treger Group of Companies, Archer clothing, United Refineries Limited, Kango products, Arenel, Dunlop, among others.
Over the years, most of the companies’ operations have been brought down to their knees by a number of challenges, including capital constraints
Speaking in an interview on The Breakfast Club, Cllr Mabutho said the city has potential investors who need to be approached and given land to develop industries.
“Before we look for outside investors we have potential investors here in the City of Bulawayo, what we need to do as the City of Bulawayo is to make sure that we identify these people. When we have identified these people, most of them are in the corporate sector, they have resources, they have money, these people have to be identified and approached and be given land to develop factories, industries,” said Cllr Mabutho.
He said the investors should also feed into the city’s vision 2024 of becoming a smart and transformative city.
“I must state that we have been able to identify come, if you look at Membar foods, Oceans bread, they have been allocated and they have built state of art, like Oceans, state of the art factories where there is a milling company, so we need to identify more so that these people can come and feed into the vision which we also have as the city by 2024 that we need to create a smart, transformative city,” said Cllr Mabutho.
He however added that the local authority will also look for outside investors who will support and feed into the Sustainable Development Goals.
“We had a workshop in Gweru and we were talking even about the SDGs, how do we fit into these to make sure that we make Bulawayo great, we were crafting our 2023 strategic plan because the Ministry now requires us to have strategic plan every year not the one which we used to craft for four or five years. So, we agreed with management that we are going to support and feed these SDGs, identify these key partners and also identify investors from outside Bulawayo who can come and feed but first we have to give preferences to the able citizens of the city of Bulawayo to come and develop their city like what they say, ‘Ilizwe lakhiwa ngabanikazi.”
“The city is built by its own people, brick by brick,” said Cllr Mabutho, borrowing from the mantra made popular by President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
