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Oliver Kazunga Senior Business Reporter
A majority of industries in Bulawayo have resumed operations after the annual shut down but production is still depressed in the wake of the prevailing economic environment, captains of industry said.Tight liquidity, stiff competition from imports coupled with intermittent power supplies continue to weigh down efforts to stimulate productivity by the local manufacturing sector.

Matabeleland Chamber of Industries president Busisa Moyo yesterday told Business Chronicle that businesses in Bulawayo continue to show signs of depression after the month-long shutdown.

“We’re not aware of companies that’ve failed to return from annual shut down although production is still depressed. Signs are showing that demand is still subdued as companies are failing to pay the workers and even the government itself has delayed to pay its workers resulting in low disposable income,” said Moyo, who is also chief executive officer of United Refineries Limited.

He said while the government was making efforts to curb the influx of imported goods, businesses were concerned about the continued smuggling of cheap finished imported products.

“We’re concerned that smuggling of goods is still taking place, for example cooking oil. Import permits for goods amounting to 1,000 tonnes and 2,000 tonnes are still being issued, by so doing that is self defeating, it undermines the objectives of the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-economic Transformation (Zim-Asset) under the value addition and beneficiation cluster,” said Moyo.

Businesses are hopeful that year 2015 will bring the desired turnaround in light of the increasing investment interest in different sectors of the economy.

The fine-tuning of indigenisation regulations among a host of proposed fiscal measures in the 2015 budget is also expected to enhance the ease of doing business and transform the economy.

However, some workers at companies in the city have reported that their employers have adopted short time working hours with some isolated small-scale players yet to resume operations.

Zim-Asset — the government’s five-year economic blueprint — is anchored on four key clusters aimed at empowering citizens through economic growth.

The four clusters are food security and nutrition, social services and poverty eradication, infrastructure and utilities and value addition and beneficiation.

Moyo urged the government to expedite implementation of economic reforms in line with the recent Cabinet recommendations based on the contributions of stakeholders, so as to address the challenges facing industry to improve capacity utilisation in the manufacturing sector.

Among the recommendations is the need to review the pricing model, labour, tax, tariffs and licensing regimes in order to attract investment.

According to the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) manufacturing sector survey for 2014, capacity utilisation in local companies declined from 39.6 percent in 2013 to 33.3 percent in 2014.