Economic situation threaten IIZ college construction project
HARAR, Economic instability is threatening the completion of insurance college being constructed by the Insurance Institute of Zimbabwe (IIZ) within the stipulated timelines, Insurance24 has learnt.
Completion of the college had been earmarked for end of 2019 with in excess of US$500 million having been set aside for the project.
IIZ managing Director George Chikava recently told Insurance 24 that if the economic situation fails to change the project might be affected as they will have to source another chunk of funding.
He also said it will definitely affect the enrolment as prospective students face uncertain future.
“We acquired a piece of land in mount pleasant. The long term objective is for us to develop a school of insurance where we will have some classes for people serving in the industry for short courses.
We will hold regular classes for short courses covering different topics. We also need to have some exam rooms because at the moment we have to pay some people because we don’t have our own facilities but we have started building and we hope if things go
well we should complete next year.
“The only threat is the way economy has changed in the past few months because we had set aside some funds for development. We are no longer sure if the amount is sufficient as we had put aside about half a million and expecting to be done by end of 2019,” he said.
Chikava also said depending with the economy situation they might be forced to review their fees structure to USD denominated for the institute to stay afloat as it had obligations that need to be settled in foreign currency.
“Presently we have been having the charges at the normal Rtgs –US rates we had nor redenominated but depending on how things go, for us to be effective we may have to look at that because we some foreign payments to make at times.
In the outlook he said the major objective is to finalise the development of the curriculum which he said might also be affected by foreign currency.
“We are really pinning our hope on economic improve of the economy so that we complete the college which we have commenced construction .If nothing changes it will also affect our enrolment levels,” he said.
