The ManicaPost
Nathaniel Mlambo business zone
It’s great to be back with the business zone after being AWOL for two weeks, but although on business.
Yours truly had travelled to the capital and later to Bulawayo for the great one’s birth day celebrations.
On my return, a number of developments unfolded on the business front, I was welcome back to my radio show by news of a declining industrial capacity in our local economy.
The Confederation of Zimbabwe Industry Manicaland chapter President Mr Richard Chiwandire during our discussion last week revealed that the province’s industry capacity utilisation remains at 33 percent against the national average of 47 percent mainly due to loss of business in the export market.
He also revealed that, Quest Motors, the only local vehicle assembling company, was retrenching nearly over a hundred workers. In addition to that, timber giant Border Timbers was also laying off.
Not so good news for the local economy! I know the question you are about to ask is, why?
I also put the same question to Chiwandire and he said he believes that Zimbabwe’s products remain expensive in the regional market due the high value of the US dollar against the rand which is widely used in the region.
This has resulted in our companies to lose competitiveness especially on exports.
How do we correct this scenario? There are many options and the debate goes on about how we can fix our competitiveness.
The CZI has called for the wide use of the South African rand to improve industry’s competitiveness.
The main argument being that we already have the rand as a trading currency and South Africa which is Zimbabwe‘s biggest trading partner bolstered by the already existing rand union.
During the conversation, the CZI president raised an important issue that has been ignored by some Government departments, and some parastatals with regards to supporting locally made products. In this case I am talking about supporting our locally assembled vehicles.
There is a Government policy pronounced on this already, but what is baffling is that it has completely been ignored.
Very few organisations and some Government schools have complied with this policy as they have been placing orders for the delivery of new buses from the Mutare plant.
The culture of looking down upon ourselves is hurting us.
Americans will never support foreign products if they hurt their economy, the same will apply to the South Africans, or the Britons.
Why do we, as consumers fail to see the big macro-economic scheme of things.
In other economies consumers or workers will go out and protest against the importation of goods that hurt the local economy.
They know they will be at the receiving end of the deal.
Failure of us to buy Zimbabwean products results in companies failing, this will in turn cause retrenchments we see today, families suffer, local authorities suffer as residents fail to pay their bills, the tax man cannot collect taxes from failing companies , ultimately the result is a spiral effect.
In my view we can’t influence export competitiveness if we fail to stimulate domestic consumption and competitiveness.
Of course there a number of factors that go into this as hard as they seem we have to adapt to build a strong economy.
◆ Nathaniel Mlambo is journalist and training content producer. For feedback email; [email protected]
