SICHINGA

MAIMBOLWA MULIKELELA
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ZAMBIA will focus on attracting foreign direct investments (FDIs) that are targeted towards building the country’s agro industrial base, Commerce, Trade and Industry Minister Robert Sichinga has said.
Mr Sichinga said the Government would this year focus on wooing foreign investment that would help build the country’s agro industrial base.
In an interview, Mr Sichinga said developing a strong agro industrial base was important in stimulating economic growth in the country.
“We don’t want to do general promotion anymore and we will now be doing targeted promotions to attract FDI and first thing to do is to identify where we want the FDI to go,” the minister said.
He said the Citizen Economic Empowerment Commission (CEEC) would be responsible for attracting investment at district level and that, the Zambia Development Agency (ZDA) would deal with the promotion of foreign direct investment.
Mr Sichinga said one of the areas the Government was looking at was the promotion of farming blocs in order to attract investors.
“The Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperative already has13 farming blocs and each one of these has  100,000 hectares and what we want is to build capacity in there.
“They will need things like cold rooms, storage facilities and they will also need support services such as commercial banks among others,” he said.
Mr Sichinga said there were things that  needed to be built  in the farming blocs because most of the Zambian industries will be agriculture-based due to the availability of water, land and labour.
He said trade missions and investment promotions would target to  develop a strong agricultural base in Zambia.
Government was working towards relaunching the Zambia International Investment Forum which was held last year in Livingstone.
“We are hoping we can do the Zambia International Investment Forum as a repeat and have it as an annual event so that we can showcase Zambia’s investment opportunities and bring  investors here to
have a look at the farm blocs, ”Mr Sichinga said.