President Robert Mugabe on Thursday commissioned the first biodiesel production plant in oil-starved Zimbabwe, vowing that the country will ”never collapse”.
”As a nation we have once again demonstrated that the ill-fated sanctions against the innocent people of Zimbabwe can never subdue our resilience and inner propulsion to succeed and remain on our feet as a nation,” Mugabe told guests at the plant’s official opening.
”Soon, our economy will be paying us back the dividends of the seedlings of progression we are planting across different productive sectors. Zimbabwe was never there to collapse, is never there to collapse and will never be there to collapse.”
The Transload biodiesel plant, 15km north-west of Harare, is a joint venture between a Zimbabwean and a South Korean firm.
Mugabe said the plant could pump 100-million litres of biodiesel annually at its peak from cotton seed, soya beans, jatropha and sunflower seed.
The project could save the country $80-million, he said.
”As a people, we have demonstrated that the dark clouds of our hard times, particularly those sown by Western destructive forces, have their silver lining by way of not just strengthening our resilience, but also of deepening our scientific research and stimulating our innovativeness,” Mugabe said.
Zimbabwe is in the throes of an economic crisis characterised by high inflation perched at nearly 8 000%, mass unemployment and chronic shortages of fuel and basic foodstuffs such as sugar and cooking oil.
Fuel stations often go for months without deliveries, while long queues form at the few that do receive supplies.
Mugabe blames the economic collapse on targeted sanctions imposed on him and members of his ruling elite by the European Union and the United States following presidential polls in 2002, which the main opposition and Western observers say were rigged. — Sapa-AFP