Tap local market, industry urged Minister Mike Bimha

Bimha-webOliver Kazunga Senior Business Reporter—-
INDUSTRY and Commerce Minister Mike Bimha is not a happy man. His major worry is failure by local industry to meet the demands of the growing mining sector, which has no option but to import most of its equipment. In a speech read on his behalf by his deputy, Chiratidzo Mabuwa, during the Joint Suppliers and Producers Conference at the ongoing Mine Entra expo in Bulawayo, Bimha said local manufacturing firms should produce quality products at competitive prices.

As one of the leading and fastest economic sectors, the minister said, mining supplies could stimulate economic growth through local procurement.

“We’re not meeting the demands of the mining sector as industry because we’re producing products which the mining sector is not able to consume.

“We can’t say to them (mining industry) buy locally yet the products don’t meet the demands of the industry,” Bimha said.

“As a country we’ve a huge potential to manufacture all the products that we consume and still have access to exports. What we’ve noticed is that they might not be need really for us to say buy Zimbabwe. What we need is to ‘shelf Zimbabwe’. Let’s put Zimbabwe on our shelves. Let’s produce and put on shelves products that meet the mining sector’s specifications and they’ll buy.”

The minister said procuring locally goes a long way in creating more jobs as well as increasing capacity utilisation in the manufacturing sector.

“The mining sector has availed opportunities for the local manufacturers or engineers. The sectors are availing 45 percent of their purchases locally but it’s sad to learn that only 11 percent is being manufactured locally.

“We need to sit down with the miners to hear what their demand is and we play ball in order for us to remain in business,” said the minister.

He said the country has a huge potential to penetrate the export market taking into consideration that Zimbabwe was at the heart of southern Africa.

Bimha bemoaned the continued imbalance between imports and exports.

He said in the first quarter of 2015 alone, imports accounted for $1.6 billion while exports stood at $716 million, leaving a deficit of $853.6 million.

“It’s further estimated that by end of the year $3.5 billion would’ve been spent on imports in this economy, which is worth $10 billion . . . of course more worrisome than this is the fact that among these imports are sub-standard goods or items being dumped into Zimbabwe,” Bimha said.

He said the Consumer Protection Bill and the Zimbabwe Quality Standards Regulatory Bill have now been drafted and were awaiting Parliamentary approval.

It is hoped that once the Bills are enacted, consumers will be protected from sub-standard products.

Meanwhile, as an interim measure of controlling sub-standard imports, the ministry has engaged Bureau Veritas, a French firm, to provide pre-shipment services under the Consignment Based Conformity Assessment programme.

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