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Golden Sibanda
BUREAU Veritas, a global standards firm contracted by the Government to carry out consignment based assessment of imports, has rejected $182 million worth of sub-standard goods destined for Zimbabwe since 2015.

Contracts manager, Mr Tendai Malunga, told the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) Annual Congress and International Investment Conference on Friday last week that the French quality standards company refused to certify the intended imports, as they did not meet minimum quality standards.

Bureau Veritas was assigned by the Government, through the Ministry of Industry and Commerce to ensure that the quality of products imported into Zimbabwe were regulated or met minimum safety, health and quality standards.

Mr Malunga said there had been strong evidence that consumers and local industry would benefit from the consignment based assessment programme (CBA), as lowly priced inferior and unsafe imports threatened safety of consumers and pushed local products to the brink.

“To date, more than $182 million products; substandard products or dangerous products destined for Zimbabwe have been rejected by Bureau Veritas (under the conformity based assessment programme for imports),” he said.

Zimbabwe imported goods valued at $5,2 billion in 2016 compared to $2,8 billion in exports. Total imports dropped from $6 billion in 2015, mainly due to the general weak aggregate demand, the declining value of fuel imports, Government’s imports restriction policies, weak South African rand and challenges faced by importers in making foreign payments.

“Prior to the implementation of the programme we were facing a situation where conformity was widely dogged. A lot of products were coming in without attention being paid as far as safety and health implications of those particular products are concerned,” Mr Malunga said.

He said the CBA programme helped create a fair environment in which local companies could operate, as only those products that meet internationally accepted safety, health and quality standards were being imported.

“This programme is a good cleaner, for local industry to also become innovative. As local companies, you also import raw materials, which feed into your value addition and ultimate quality of products that you produce to meet local demand and demand for export markets,” he added.

Mr Malunga said local manufacturing processes needed to meet set standards to meet quality requirements of local regional and export markets. He said compliance with global quality standards was key for access to global markets and competitiveness, which also leads to higher productivity.

The Government has also been able to control or restrict the amount and value of imported products, some of which were lowly priced, of inferior quality or which local companies could produce, through Statutory Instrument 64 of 2017, which the Government implemented with effect from July last year.

The volumes of imports had the effect of crowding out local products, due to competitiveness issues stemming from high costs of production, which at some point saw capacity utilisation in post dollarisation falling to 34 percent. Since introduction of SI-64, industrial capacity has crept up to 47 percent.