HON. KHUPE: Thank you very much Mr. Speaker Sir. My

question is directed to the Leader of the House, Hon. Vice President

Mnangagwa. In September 2015, world leaders gathered in New York

and they came up with sustainable development goals which are a

successor framework of the Millennium Development Goals. They

made a declaration that they were going to transform the world and they

also vowed that they were going to eliminate poverty by the year 2030.

As Zimbabwe, what is it that we are doing or have done to make sure

that there are monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to determine the

impact and sustainability of the sustainable development goals if indeed

we are to eliminate poverty by the year 2030.

THE VICE PRESIDENT AND MINISTER OF JUSTICE,

LEGAL AND PARLIAMENTARY AFFAIRS (HON.

MNANGAGWA): Thank you Mr. Speaker Sir, I also want to thank the

Hon. Member, the Vice President of MDC-T for the question. I want to

thank her for remembering what happened in 2015. I feel very elated

that she thinks that I should remember the decision which was taken at

that time. Mr. Speaker Sir, in terms of policy, I can assure the Hon.

Member and the House that everything is being done in the various subsectors

of the economy to improve the lives of our people. In particular,

coming to the situation of Zimbabwe, we believe that the primary

challenge we are facing in this country which I believe everybody who

is a citizen of this country would agree that we have a primary economy

which is on the bedrock of our agricultural sector.

Everything is being done by Government and the public sector to

support our agricultural sector so that we put behind the issue of

continuously importing food, whether there is good season in terms of

rain or there is drought. We have now put measures to make sure that

there is food sufficiency in the country. We wish to accomplish this

goal within the next four seasons. There are two seasons in a year, this

means in two years’ time, we shall have accomplished that area.

Then the other areas which are directed to dealing with the

question of alleviating or eradicating poverty among the people; we have

various sectors of the economy which deal with those issues. Obviously,

the economy is not performing well but everything is being done by

Government, private sector, public sector and parastatals to do our best

under these circumstances to make sure we improve the lives of our

people.

In the area of infrastructural development, I am sure colleagues are

fully aware about the projects that are underway which are unfolding in

the infrastructural development sector. We are also fully aware about

what is happening in the area of tourism. We have just completed the

runway at Victoria Falls which now is going to be able to take on board

bigger planes to land. As a matter of fact, China alone has something

like 250 million tourists per year which is expected to grow to 600

million by 2020. If we structure our tourism with countries of that

nature and various other countries worldwide, we believe that now with

the runway which we have completed, we should be able to improve our

tourism sector. As a matter of fact, the indication and projection of that

sector shows growth.

Mr. Speaker Sir, we also go into the areas of manufacturing and

ICT. We are attending to all these areas in order to improve the lives of

our people. More-so, we will continue to make sure that the areas of

health and education receive full attention and we hope to receive

cooperation from all citizens of this country.

I am aware that this subject is at the heart of the former Deputy

Prime Minister because when he was Deputy Prime Minister, she used

to champion this sector very ably and I still recognise that you have not

forgotten this thing which you were championing at that time. I thank you “