HARARE - Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai will today unveil an economic blueprint with measures to create jobs and lure billions in investment in an MDC manifesto that will frame the message of his election campaign.

The economic blueprint, dubbed JUICE, will lay out in clear terms a theme Tsvangirai has been repeating recently about creating a $100 billion economy in Zimbabwe.

JUICE will focus on the four pillars of civilisation: power, communication, water and roads, according to MDC organising secretary and ICT minister Nelson Chamisa.

The PM will officially launch the blueprint at High Glen Shopping Centre in Harare this morning as part of his party’s proposals to spur the nation’s still sluggish recovery from a decade-long recession if elected in the next poll.

“JUICE, which is the, Jobs, Upliftment, Investment, Capital and Environment is our response to issues of short-term and medium-term,” Chamisa    told the Daily News yesterday.

“We believe we must attract investment, we believe the focus should be to get the unemployed youths to be employed and the focus should be to reopen service industries.”

Given the treacherous state of the economy, the PM’s campaign aides are attempting to make the theme of the upcoming election a choice about the role of government and the future of the youths — not a referendum on President Robert Mugabe’s handling of the economy.

The economic blueprint and its underlying theme — job creation, go a long way to shaping that message.
The PM will continue to challenge Zanu PF’s indigenisation policy and how it has threatened most elements of his jobs plan and embroiled Harare in a bitter fight.

JUICE is an alternative to Zanu PF’s empowerment drive.

“Indigenisation is total nonsense, it’s like giving someone suffering from a headache GV,” Chamisa said.

“We have an upliftment matrix under JUICE, uplift youths through housing for bachelors, incubation centres for entrepreneurship.

“It talks to housing, it talks to manufacturing, it talks to farming, it talks to a lot of issues.

“For instance, we are not just talking about land reform but agrarian reform, the whole value chain, changing land tenure, marketing, pricing, productivity etc.”

The JUICE launch will build on a theme the PM laid last month — that in today’s economy, the game has been rigged against the nation’s youths who have been denied employment opportunities by the indigenisation policy that has spooked foreign investors and heightened the country’s risk profile.
 
Tsvangirai wants Zimbabwe to return to the “values” that define Zimbabwe, where hard work pays off and where responsibility — not recklessness — is rewarded.

In an address in Bulawayo, Tsvangirai described stark differences between a Zanu PF ideology he described as leaving people to fend for themselves and his vision of government that helps provide equal opportunity for all Zimbabweans regardless of where they begin in life.

MDC sources told the Daily News the bullet points of JUICE will focus on Zimbabwean manufacturing, and luring back jobs.

The blueprint also stresses alternative energy development and energy independence from other nations, new technologies.

Tsvangirai is expected at the launch — to be attended by captains of industry and commerce and other civics — to tout his record of stabilising an economy wrecked by a decade of economic meltdown blamed on President Mugabe.

The address will include new proposals to prepare Zimbabwean workers and students for the jobs of the future, job training for the long-term unemployed and veterans, and expend grants for college students.

Just after the speech, the PM will begin a swing to provinces that are expected to be battlegrounds in the upcoming election. - Gift Phiri, Politics Editor