LEX-FAOC050972

The Medium Term Plan (MTP) is the premier economic and social policy document of Zimbabwe, it will guide all other government policy documents and sets out clearly the national priorities and investment programmes for the next five years 2011-2015. The MTP’s main goal is to transform the economy, reduce poverty, create job, maintain macroeconomic stability and restore the economy’s capacity to produce goods and services competitively, building upon the gains achieved since the launch of STERP in March 2009. In order to eliminate hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition, strategies in cereal production in the MTP will focus on increasing yields for maize and small grains in order to ensure national and household food security through: (i) improving and promoting proper use of fertilizers, efficient utilisation of water bodies and applying improved farming techniques such as conservation farming, (ii) promote the production of small grains especially in the drought prone areas, (iii) capacity of ARDA and restore it to its position as major producer of wheat and maize, to contribute towards national food security. In order to make agriculture, forestry and fisheries more productive and sustainable, the government plans to enhance agricultural mechanization, irrigation rehabilitation and agricultural research through, among others, the following strategies: (i) encourage NGOs farmer’s unions and associations and private agents to develop more micro-irrigation and intensive production schemes, (ii) facilitation farmer access to farm equipment and machinery as well as promoting the provision of training service to enable farmers to repair and maintain farm structures such as tobacco barn, storage sheds, pump houses and irrigation equipment, (iii) committing more resources to research on value addition and post-harvest technologies and strengthening research on soil fertility and water management to enhance agricultural productivity, (iv) promoting gender responsive extension approaches to take into account special circumstances of women farmers who dominate the smallholder sector, (v) encourage financial institutions to develop collateral mechanisms that are responsive to prevailing land hold arrangements, (vi) facilitate source of external lines of credit by fertilizer manufactures for recapitalization to expend capacity and repair dilapidated equipment. In addition, strategic policy interventions in the medium term plan for livestock production will focus on beef, dairy and small stock and the government will create a conductive environment for informal fishing activities to be integral parts of the formal fisheries sector, which will be critical for effective management of resources and employment creation. Regarding the reduction of the rural poverty, the MTP will facilitate the full commercialization of agro bank and foster partnership with other players in the private sector. This will assist the government to: (i) to facilitate the creation of a conductive regulatory environment for the development of rural savings, (ii) develop saving and credit cooperative societies and promote microfinance at community level, (iii) promote inclusive business models that support the youth, women and disadvantaged, (iv) protect poor and vulnerable households from sliding into poverty and suffer irreversible welfare losses and establish a development fund for women to have access to lines of credit for empowerment projects. To enable inclusive and efficient agricultural and food systems, the MTP seeks to ensure that agriculture marketing is well financed to ensure that there is efficient and reliable marketing and regulation of agricultural commodities in the country by: (i) creating enabling environment for trade by simplifying boarder regulations, boosting air freight services to create greater traffic flows to aid in export of perishables and strengthening trade facilitation institutions, and (ii) exploiting comparative advantages that the country has in tobacco, cotton, sugar and horticulture. To increase the resilience of livelihood to disasters, the following legal and regulatory measures will be worked on the strengthen national environmental policy: (i) development of national climate change strategy and policy, (ii) incorporate provision for environmental assessment and management in all economic and development activities, (iii) regulation and policy development of key environmental issues in Zimbabwe, pollution, environmental degradation, climate change strategy, (iv) embark on extensive afforestation and re-afforestion programmes which are spear headed by local communities. In the context of governance, the MTP will guide the national Budget since the budget will be used as a tool to implement the MTP. This will see the reintroduction of the planning commission under the Ministry of economic planning & investment promotion (MEPIP) to assist in the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of Plan.