Banket identified as potential site for Zimbabwe-Z...

Banket identified as potential site for Zimbabwe-Zambia Common Agro-Industrial Park processing plant

The Grain Marketing Board - Gallery - Banket

Zim Now Reporter

The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa led Zimbabwe-Zambia Common Agro-Industrial Park processing site will be established in Banket, pending feasibility studies.

This was revealed during a meeting between a four member COMESA delegation and Provincial Affairs and Devolution Minister Marian Chombo.

“We are going to show them five or six centres, which are located at Makuti, Chirundu, Magunje, Lionsdale and Makonde, and they are all on the Harare-Chirundu road,” said Chombo.

CAIP is being facilitated by COMESA to support a 2021 trade deal between Zimbabwe and Zambia which will see a cereal processing plant set up in either country.

“For this project, we have already done a pre-feasibility study looking at the crops produced here … so that they feed in this agro-industrial park which we are establishing as well as analysing the enabling frameworks, institutional mechanisms, policies, legal environment between the two member states. So, going forward, we are now conducting a full feasibility study,” said COMESA Senior Private Sector Development Officer, Ms Esther Mwimba.

Chombo said the value addition development will see province benefitting from its high agriculture production through increased returns and jobs.

“We are a cereal producing province but to date, we do not have a single processing plant within the Province such that everything is being taken to other provinces. That means we are exporting jobs and money,” Chombo said.