Kudzai Furusa ZANU PF Secretary for Indigenisation and Politburo Member Cde Mike Bimha revealed that the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Policy is being reviewed because there has been a lot of changes in our environment. Cde Bimha said this whilst addressing the media during the press briefing on Monday at the ZANU PF Headquarters which was a post the Central Committee session held on Friday on why the policy was being reviewed. The policy was initially placed to further indigenisation of the economy, to support measures for the economic empowerment of indigenous Zimbabweans, to provide for the establishment of the National Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Board and its functions and management and to provide for the establishment of the National Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Fund among other reasons Cde Bimha highlighted that the reason why there was a need for a review was because there has been a lot of changes in our environment due to the coming in of the new dispensation which has its thrust on reviving the economy to achieve vision 2030 towards an upper middle income economy. He said the review process involved a lot of consultations as they went to various provincial towns conducting consultations and involving almost everyone, the private sector students, civil society and also members of the party among others members of the communities. “The policy looks at the youth, women, war vets and disabled groups in our community. The whole thrust is to increase the participation of these group in the economy,” he said. Cde Bimha went on to say, “The changes on the legislation, on the indigenisation, economic and empowerment are particularly the doing away of the 51/49% threshold. All these changes necessitated a review of our policy as a party. “We want to strengthen this policy to ensure that only our people will be able to participate in this area. It has been lacking in terms of enforcement and we believe that we would want the party and Government to strengthen the mechanism for enforcing this reserved sector policy so that our people can be found in those areas that are deemed reserved sectors,” he said. Cde Bimha said the policy will be looking at issues of control so that local people can have control of specific sectors of our economy, looking at issues of forming their savings and lending clubs at their different levels, the formation of Ward Development Committees which are chaired He said the private sector is playing their part in empowerment, on issues to do with apprenticeship training, graduate development and graduate entrepreneurship looking at the participation of the private sector.