HARARE, Sept. 15 (Xinhua) -- Government ministries have been instructed to come up with strategies to resuscitate ailing state enterprises and parastatals (SEPs) under their purview and to recommend the dissolution of those that are inefficient, a senior government official has said.
Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet Misheck Sibanda told an engagement workshop between the public and private sectors on the Public Entities Corporate Governance Bill on Thursday that Cabinet had directed him to ensure that SEPs were restructured and operated viably, the Herald reported Friday.
He said the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development would work with various government agencies to help the ministries come up with turnaround strategies for the state entities under their control.
Zimbabwe has 107 SEPs whose majority report losses every year, and at least six are insolvent.
President Mugabe recently said the SEPs were contributing only 11 percent of GDP in recent years compared to about 40 percent in the 1990s.
The decline has been attributed to asset stripping and mismanagement.
"Without effective performance and efficient service delivery by the sector, most especially the majority utility providers and commercial enterprises, the ambitious goals and development objectives under ZimAsset may remain beyond reach, certainly within the expected timeframes," he said.
Zimbabwe has an economic blueprint called the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (ZimAsset) which set targets for certain milestones to have been achieved within particular periods.
