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BUSISA MOYO

Business Reporter
ZIMBABWE is on track towards unlocking new business opportunities and investment in key sectors of the economy, the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) has said.

The industry lobby group’s head, Mr Busisa Moyo, said progress has been done by the three committees formed by the private sector and the Government to identify new business opportunities.

The three committees are funding and investment, agri-business and mining linkages.

“The three committees have been very successful in trying to achieve the set objectives. We have held a meeting with the World Bank to try and develop the concept of agricultural products across the value chains.

“We have also discussed issues on how we can increase the hectarage for crops such as maize, and soya among others,” said Mr Moyo, a member of the agri-business committee and chief executive officer of United Refineries Limited.

He said the committee on funding and investment was looking at unlocking funding opportunities with potential investors adding that discussions in that regard have been held with investors from Turkey, Russia and Belarus.

Since 2009, funding challenges have been one of the hiccups constraining economic recovery as companies were struggling to secure working capital to retool their plants.

“The mining linkage committee is also making efforts to promote local procurement by mining houses.

“We have noted that about $1 billion was being spent on procurement with only 11 percent of that being spent locally,” he said.

As part of efforts to promote value addition and beneficiation, CZI has identified 18 value chains in different sectors of the economy that should be targeted for investment.

Under its “Value Chain Mapping” programme, the industrial body has hinted that in-depth studies would be carried to establish and address bottlenecks impacting on productivity as well as promote investment in the production value chains.

Zimbabwe’s industry is failing to operate at competitive levels due to a cocktail of factors including lack of affordable capital and antiquated equipment that have seen businesses failing to fully exploit opportunities for product beneficiation.

Some of the value chains that have been targeted include tobacco-cigarette manufacture, asbestos-roofing-construction, gold and diamond-jewellery-ornaments, chrome ore-chromium-chrome plated goods, cotton-clothing, as well as iron ore-billets-foundry-fabricated steel products.

@okazunga.