admin
and Africa Unity Square respectively.
Zimbabwe Revenue Authority Commissioner-General Mr Gershom Pasi, Buy Zimbabwe Board of Trustees chairperson Ms Grace Muradzikwa, Consumer Council of Zimbabwe executive director Ms Rose Siyachitema and Standards Association of Zimbabwe director-general Ms Eve Gadzikwa are some of the high-profile speakers expected at the conference.
The conference is aimed at defining practical steps and programmes critical to ensuring that local companies receive greater preference in procurement decisions in the country.
This follows an outcry from Zimbabwe’s manufacturing sector that they are being sidelined in preference to South African and Chinese suppliers most of whom are allegedly dumping sub-standard products on the local market.
Most recently, Willowvale Mazda Motor Industries and Quest Motors said they were on the verge of collapse following repeated failure to secure Government tenders even in cases where their prices were lower than foreign suppliers.
The pharmaceutical industry, which has been reeling under the onslaught of cheap imports, has also voiced concern over Zimbabwe’s failure to respond appropriately to South Africa’s 70 percent local procurement policy agreed between Government, labour and industry resulting in fewer exports to that country.
Governor Reserve Bank Dr Gideon Gono and Minister of Finance Tendai Biti have also bemoaned the increased import bill which in 2012 resulted in a US$3 billion deficit and continued to surge in the first quarter of 2013.
The Buy Zimbabwe Trust, formed as an all stakeholder initiative in 2011, is a competitiveness driver that seeks to promote production and consumption of Zimbabwe’’s quality products and services.
Zimbabwean companies face an uphill task to recapture the market they have lost as local suppliers continue to play second fiddle to their foreign competitors.
The reason for that is the decade of economic instability that the Zimbabwe economy went through up to about 2008. But while few if any companies invested in capital programmes in the decade to 2008, generally most companies had also not invested new money long before the crisis. Most companies could still produce for the domestic and foreign markets because competition was low while inflation also covered up for inefficiencies.
But the advent of the US dollar has resulted in an influx of cheaper imports and burden of high cost, because of the stable currency, which has made it difficult for inefficient producers and less innovative firms feeling the pinch.
Because of the difficulties local companies face in their efforts to raise fresh funding for recapitalisation, which include liquidity crisis and high cost, outgoing Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries president Kumbirai Katsande said Government needed to protect strategic and vulnerable industries. He said this, together with plugging porous borders, would reduce the extent to which cheap imports land on the domestic market and give local companies room to address the challenges militating against their operations.
Online Reporter