“You don’t need to wait for the economy to be stable to make money,” Smartvest company secretary and portfolio manager Michael Mautsahuku told participants in the Chartered Governance and Accountancy Institute in Zimbabwe summer school in Nyanga last week.
He listed medicinal cannabis, mining, tourism, infrastructure, energy, Special Economic Zones and agriculture as areas where there were investment opportunities.
While some of these investments required large amounts of capital, much less was required to provide equipment and services to these industries, he said.
There were, for instance, opportunities to make money by leasing mining equipment to mining companies or providing taxis or game drives in tourism centres or offering sunset cruises on the Zambezi River in Victoria Falls. Quad biking was another lucrative area that one could invest in.
He provided figures to illustrate that such investments would quickly pay for themselves.
Profitable agricultural opportunities included the production of macadamia nuts, blueberries and boer goats. Dog breeding was also profitable, he said.
Other opportunities to make money included real estate investments and stocks and shares. Real estate investments provided opportunities for capital appreciation and a rental income, though property prices could go down as well as up.
If property was bought in order to obtain a rental income, it was more profitable to invest in houses in high density areas than low density areas, he said, illustrating this point with examples of how many houses one could buy in a high density suburb with the same amount as required to buy one house in a plush low density area and the rental one could expect from each.
Likewise, he said, while properties in South Africa appeared cheaper than in Zimbabwe, a higher rental income would be obtained in Zimbabwe than in South Africa.
If one wanted a house to live in, it was cheaper to buy in South Africa but if the investment was for a rental income, it was better to buy a house in Zimbabwe. If one wanted a house in Zimbabwe to live in, then a house in a low density area was preferable for comfort. However, if the house investment was purely for a rental income, then it was better to go for high density houses.
Mr Mautsahuku detailed other investment opportunities, including stocks and shares and unit trusts. He said pyramid schemes had become popular because financial institutions had not moved with the times. They were offering low interest rates when people wanted high returns.
It was not true that it was impossible to make high returns. There were binary options where huge returns could be made by those willing to take a risk, he said.
