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Senior Business Reporter
ZIMBABWE’S cooking oil industry is now operating at 85 percent capacity with some of the companies in the sector mulling penetrating the export market, a Cabinet Minister has said.

Speaking at the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce breakfast meeting in Harare on Wednesday, Industry and Commerce Minister, Mike Bimha, said since the removal of the cooking oil import licence, local oil expressers had significantly improved on their capacity utilisation.

“Eighteen months ago, we had some oil expressers who were about to close because of too much importation of cooking oil. When we decided to remove cooking oil from the open import general licence where we now require people to get the licence before importing, it changed the whole spectrum to a point where most of the oil expressers are now operating at 85 percent capacity utilisation.

Some of them are actually looking at opportunities to export into Comesa and Sadc,” he said.

As a result of the removal of the open import general licence on cooking oil, Minister Bimha said some of the South African companies that were exporting to Zimbabwe were now looking at setting up plants in the country.

“It also happened that those companies that were exporting to Zimbabwe because of that … The Oil Expressers’ Association of Zimbabwe is on record as saying its members have a capacity of over 12,000 tonnes per month of cooking oil while local demand is estimated at 10,000 tonnes per month.”

Over the years, Zimbabwe has been importing $220 million worth of cooking oil annually on the back of low capacity utilisation in the sector.

Minister Bimha also stressed the need to promote local production to bring back viability in the manufacturing sector to foster growth and development of the economy through employment creation and exports. He said it was disheartening to note that the country was importing deboned meat and pet meat.

“Do you really need to import meat for cats?” asked Minister Bimha.

In the 2014 national budget, Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa introduced several measures to stem importation of products that are locally produced.