Zimpapers Logo

Oliver Kazunga, Senior Business Reporter
BULAWAYO companies expect to leverage on this month’s Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) congress to seal investment deals and trade partnerships with local and foreign counterparts.

The city will host the 2018 CZI congress and investment indaba next week. The event comes at a time Government and the private sector are seeking ways of transforming the economy and revamping the manufacturing sector in particular.

CZI Matabeleland Chapter president, Mr Joseph Gunda, said the upcoming annual congress and investment forum would assist the city in attracting productive deals with potential investors.

“With these international delegates from Japan, Korea, Turkey and India gracing our upcoming forum, there are a lot of learning points. And we are inviting foreign direct investments, partnerships and joint ventures from countries that have a success record in turning around their economies like India so that we secure investment deals that can turnaround Bulawayo industries and the country at large,” he said.

The event will be held at a city hotel from September 26 to 28 under the theme, “From Dialogue to Implementation, Time to Act”.

Mr Gunda said the, “Zimbabwe is open for business”, mantra adopted by Government was inspiring to the private sector, which was willing to work with the foreign investors to revive the economy. He said forthcoming indaba was significant for the revival of Bulawayo industries as the forum seeks to promote implementation of strategies that bolster industrial recovery.

“Our theme sets the tone for implementation shifting from rhetoric. There are good initiatives that have been brought forward by industry to Government. A lot of them have been accepted but the challenge that we have is on implementation,” said Mr Gunda.

He said although the Government had managed to promulgate Statutory Instruments such as SI 64, 122 and 126, their implementation was lacking. “We have seen the positive results so far. For example, if you look at 2016 into 2017, the throughput from our manufacturing sector went up and we are expecting as we do our annual manufacturing sector survey for this year, capacity utilisation to have gone up slightly.

“The records that we capture from the companies that report to our CZI chamber in Matabeleland are showing significant improvement in capacity utilisation and productivity following own protection,” said Mr Gunda. — @okazunga.