Deputy Minister of Finance and Economic Planning Terrence Mukupe has claimed that corruption can have positive effects on a country. Speaking at a roundtable discussion, Mukupe said,
I read an article to the effect that corruption can be also positive for the country. After going through that article I can actually give you some life lessons I had. I remember when I was advisor to ESSAR (An Indian company that wanted to invest in Ziscosteel) and ESSAR wanted to come into Zimbabwe, someone approached me and said the fundamental mistake you are making with ESSAR is that you don’t have a local partner.
….And the response that this guy made was that government is not a person and it does not eat, it does not breath, it is not motivated to make the transaction work well. So by you giving away part of your transaction to someone else, that person is going to make sure that they wake up every day because they are motivated to make sure that the transaction works. So that is a case of positive corruption…I guess his goals were aligned with the goals of government and everything else was moving on well and it became positive corruption for the country.
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