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Charles Msipa

Senior Business Reporter
THE Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) has started conducting the 2014 manufacturing survey to determine the performance of companies.CZI chief executive officer Clifford Sileya told Business Chronicle yesterday that their researchers were already in the field and questionnaires have been sent to different companies throughout the country.

“We have started conducting the 2014 manufacturing sector survey. The process actually started in the first week of July. Our researchers are already in the field in Harare, Bulawayo, Mutare, the Midlands and other parts of the country,” he said.

Sileya said the manufacturing sector survey seeks to ensure that representation of companies was done sector by sector before a final report was released before the end of the year.

“The manufacturing sector survey analyses companies on a sector by sector basis, looking at the challenges they are facing, state of their machinery as well as the state of their capacity utilisation among others,” he said.

Since the liberalisation of the economy in February 2009, Zimbabwe’s manufacturing sector has been grappling to increase capacity utilisation to competitive levels.

This was largely due to lack of working capital, obsolete equipment that was susceptible to frequent breakdowns, low product demand and intermittent power supplies.

According to the 2013 survey, capacity utilisation stood at 39.6 percent from 44.9 percent in 2012.

In May this year, CZI president Charles Msipa said the manufacturing sector required at least $8 billion as working capital and for retooling to avoid further collapse.