Had wanted to share with our Diasporan Community the latest trends in the Real Estate sector, new housing developments from ZIMRE Phase 2, Kadoma City Council and Chimanimani RDC but will shelve it for now and bring it next week.
Let us look at how the Diaspora can invest back home. Iam talking of ‘beyond Real Estate investment’ because there are some who have built homes in the Diaspora and back home and are looking at other investment options outside real estate. Investment on the stock market is one option, in future Diasporan Bonds may be coming and a lot of various investment vehicles for your benefit.
This week allow ZBIN to tackle Tender Opportunities! A lot of opportunities abound in Zimbabwe and one hidden area where you can access these opportunities is through the analysis of Public Tenders! You do not need to go far but just to analyse all tenders that are published in local newspapers.
Here are some of the top tenders in the month of April
- IT Equipment procurement (including laptops)
- Vehicle procurement (Toyota 4×4 trucks)
- Stationery and Printing
- Construction
A look at 3 of the tenders above shows that the procurements have to be done outside Zimbabwe and in most cases South Africa. The country does not manufacture IT Equipment or vehicles. Most of our stationery requirements are imported therefore the Diaspora should take advantage of this by partnering with locals in tenders.
Who flights tenders in Zimbabwe?
When you look at the macro –economic landscape in Zimbabwe, its easy to say there are no opportunities, there is liquidity challenges, forex challenges and therefore make one quick ill-informed conclusion. You can quickly come to the conclusion that the country has little to no opportunities, but an analysis of this sector shows that various players are involved in flighting tenders and include The Government of Zimbabwe, Parastatals, The NGO sector, Colleges and Schools, churches and Private Companies and Institutes.
Partnerships and Risks
The issue of trust is definitely high in this business, people have been conned before and the Diaspora community has been a major victim. Trusting someone based locally is a big risk…there are a lot of stories involving relatives who are no longer on talking terms and the reason is abuse of funds! Someone would have been conned by locals….examples include home construction, kombi and trucks businesses. A lot of Diasporans lost funds by partnering with relatives. So if your own brothers and sisters can con you how about partnering with complete strangers?
Proposed Solution
Accounting firms and Legal firms should innovate and come up with programs that address risks where Diasporans and locals are involved in partnerships. Registered Accounting or Legal firms have a reputation to protect; they can be deregistered if they involve themselves in scams. These are the organisations to deal with especially accounting firms that are experts in risk management. ZBIN is therefore challenging all Accounting and Legal firms to come up with Diaspora and Locals Partnership Strategies because the appetite to invest by the Diaspora is high-the only impediment being risk.
So in relation to the tender business the Diaspora may have access to forex resources, access to information of where to source products at competitive rates. He or she is therefore at a competitive advantage compared to someone in Zimbabwe. The Diaspora should therefore form a local company and partner with locals and participate on tenders.
If you are partnering with a local then manage the risk mentioned above get someone that you can trust, form a company and ensure all paperwork is in order and watch closely tenders because this is a multi-million dollar industry. In future it is expected to be a multi-billion industry that will drive the growth of our wonderful nation.
Where do you get tender information when you are the diaspora? You have 2 options, to ask your friends and relatives back home to track them on your behalf or to subscribe to ZBIN as a paid up member. Our paid up members have access to 4 Tender Trackers per month, we also summarise and provide an analysis of tender opportunities every quarter. How much to be a paid up member? Our membership is $10 for six months and includes a host of other benefits such as access to all of our WhatsApp platforms, access to selected business plans, newsletters and free adverts promotion. We have covered before the number of benefits that our registered members enjoy.
