Speaker of Parliament dropped a bombshell when he told businessmen in Victoria Falls that the Zimbabwe Iron and Steel Company, ZISCO, can be resuscitated for only $30 million without any foreign investor.
He has so far not been challenged either by business itself or economists, but is this possible?
Indian company, Essar, had sealed a deal to resuscitate the plant for $750 million but the deal fell through.
“I want to submit to you that I have made my own investigations. ZISCOsteel can be resuscitated with only $30 million locally without an external investor. It can be done without external people. Sometimes our problem is that we do not want to know the truth and that’s a shallow mentality,” Mudenda said.
“I am going to engage the Minister of Industry and Chinamasa as well and say this is what we need. We can do it locally quite easily and ZISCO can be up and running and those workers will be back at work. Hwange Colliery used to supply up to five trains per week to ZISCO, it can happen again.”
Mudenda said there was urgent need to revive ZISCO because you cannot speak of industrialization without steel.
Binga South Member of Parliament Joel Gabbuza said last year ZISCO is so strategic to the country’s economy that a quarter to half of the country’s problems would be resolved if it came into operation today.
He said ZISCO was so intricate and interlocked to all aspects of the economy that the government must mobilize funds to resuscitate the company if it cannot find an investor.
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