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Midlands Correspondent
THE Consignment Based Conforming Assessment (CBCA) has started bearing fruit in favour of local firms with the government, through French consultancy firm Bureau Veritas, intensifying monitoring of foreign and local products to ensure they adhere to the minimum quality standards.

The move is part of efforts to protect consumers from cheap imports, which have flooded the local market.

The government contracted the company last year to ensure that products coming into the country comply with its minimum standards. The move followed an outcry from local manufacturers that substandard products were flooding the local market and pushing locals out of business.

Industry and Commerce Deputy Minister, Chiratidzo Mabuwa told Chronicle Business those products, which do not meet the minimum quality standards, will be taken off the shelves.

“Bureau Veritas started work on the March 1 and we’re already yielding results. We’ve companies that haven’t complied that are crying foul after giving them almost the whole year of popularising our efforts on ensuring quality as well as taking queries from businesspeople to make sure that we tighten up the loose ends in as far as our agreement with Bureau Veritas is concerned. Now we’re making sure that we don’t become a dumpsite of inferior quality products,” said Mabuwa.

Through Bureau Veritas, the government has banned from the shelves any product that does not meet local Standards Association of Zimbabwe regulations and those set by the World Trade Organisation.

The government is set to take control of the process from the French firm through the National Quality Standards Authority once the necessary legal framework is put in place.

There has been a call to expedite the enactment of the Zimbabwe Quality Standards Regulatory Bill into law to safeguard local products from cheap imports.

Once passed into law, the Act will monitor and regulate the quality of goods imported into the country.

SAZ chairman, Trust Chikohora said cheap imports have created an unfair competition to local established brands a situation, which has been exacerbated by low capacity utilisation by the local manufacturing sector.

The local manufacturing sector has been rattled by a plethora of problems, among them lack of working capital, high production costs, which have made them uncompetitive against imported, cheap products from South Africa and Asian countries.