FUNDING for domestic development will come under the spotlight during the last week of this month, when heads of Zimbabwean companies meet in London to explore ways of mobilising finance.
The capital markets conference, set for April 20 and 21, will have several highlights including a function at the London Stock Exchange, one of the world’s biggest bourses with a market capitalisation of US$$3,57 trillion.
A statement released by organisers on Wednesday said several firms had already confirmed participation.
These include the Victoria Falls Stock Exchange listed Caledonia Mining Corporation, CBZ Holdings, the Nyaradzo Group and Karo Mining Holdings.
Also expected to attend will be the British International Investment and the UK government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.
Attending along the Zimbabwean firms will be officials from the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE), Victoria Falls Stock (VFEX), the Securities and Exchange Commission of Zimbabwe (SecZim), the Insurance and Pensions Commission, the Zimbabwe Investment and Development Agency (Zida) and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe.
The statement said the Zim-UK Business Chamber, the Zimbabwe Diaspora Nation-Building Initiative, Zimbabwe Diaspora Investment Group, Institute of Chartered Accountants of Zimbabwe (UK chapter), ZimThrive, Martketseer, CMG media group and Zimbabwe Diaspora Investment Group will also participate.
Finance minister Mthuli Ncube will address the conference, which is organised and partly funded by Financial Markets Indaba and Bard Santner Markets Inc among other players.
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“The conference is facilitated by the Zimbabwean embassy in the UK led by ambassador Christian Katsande,” the statement said, noting that Bard Santner Markets Inc will be the headline sponsor of the conference whose theme is The role capital markets for sustainable growth of the economy: Creating and developing efficient local capital markets.
Financial Markets Indaba is a series of investment conferences convened under Indaba Africa, an emergent research network of interactive conferences that seeks to profile the investment potential of Africa.
It provides capital raising, advisory services, and research services for international funds, institutional investors and private investors investing Africa.
“The aim of the event is to showcase the local capital market to international investors, including the diaspora investing community to mobilise capital,” the statement said.
Anymore Taruvinga, SecZim chief executive officer, said the conference would present enormous opportunities for Zimbabwe.
“Our interest as the capital markets regulator is obviously to ensure that the Zimbabwean story is told,” he said.
“We have the local stock exchange: the ZSE and the USD trading platform VFEX, which our community in the diaspora, including London should be utilising as part of their investment and also part of their support to the nation. I think from reports that are shared by the central bank, there are significant amounts that are being remitted to Zimbabwe and most of those funds coming from the diaspora just end up as consumption amounts,” Taruvinga said.
“But I think we have it upon ourselves to ensure that some of those funds are channelled towards investments. From investments that is where our real sectors or productive sectors can then draw financing to expand operations or to invest further into processing and value addition which augur well for our economy and help us to achieve our Vision 2030 of an upper middle income economy. The second other aspect is that we might also have potential entrepreneurs—both foreigners and from our diaspora community—that may be interested in actually setting up shop in Zimbabwe—either as a stockbroker or as a financial advisor, or asset manager. They may also want to know what it takes to participate in that space, so us as a regulator we are going there to ensure that potential entrepreneurs are well informed and are assured that it’s a process that really very easy and us as a regulator will be there to support them in whatever entrepreneurial activity that they may want to undertake. But basically we want to support our capital markets, we want to market our capital markets, we want to ensure that there is incremental investments in our capital markets from the diaspora as well as from the foreign investors,” he said.
