Online Reporter
Business Reporter
Zimbabwe’s forthcoming chairmanship of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) will create trade opportunities, but businesses will need to do more to guarantee export success.
National Competitiveness Commission (NCC) board chairperson Mrs Patience Chimuka said in an interview on Capitalk FM’s programme, Business Focus, that Zimbabwean businesses must be competitive in price, quality, standards, reliability and delivery if they are to benefit from regional integration.
“Regional integration creates markets, but competitiveness determines whether Zimbabwean businesses can actually capture those markets,” she said.
“We should not confuse market access with market success.
“Opening a market does not automatically mean Zimbabwean companies will sell into it.”
Her remarks come as President Mnangagwa will assume the chairmanship of the COMESA trading bloc when Zimbabwe hosts the 25th COMESA Summit in Harare in October.
COMESA is a regional economic community of 21 sovereign member states working together to promote economic growth and regional integration.
It has a population of over 640 million people and a combined gross domestic product of roughly US$1,2 trillion.
As a free trade area, member countries strive to eliminate import tariffs and quotas on goods produced within the bloc, making it cheaper and easier to trade across borders.
Mrs Chimuka said the chairmanship gives Zimbabwe a platform to place exporters’ concerns, particularly non-tariff barriers, border efficiency, standards, logistics, rules of origin and regional value chains, at the top of the regional agenda.
She said Zimbabwe should use its leadership position to push “Made in Zimbabwe” intermediate goods, including agro-processed products, building materials and light manufactures, into regional procurement systems, rather than exporting mainly raw commodities.
The NCC, established under the National Competitiveness Commission Act, is a statutory body under the Ministry of Industry and Commerce.
Its mandate includes regulatory impact assessment, identifying domestic cost drivers, assessing sector competitiveness, research, strategy development and public-private dialogue.
Mrs Chimuka stressed that competitiveness implications affect ordinary Zimbabweans.
“It is about the price of bread, the availability of jobs, the cost of transport, whether a small business can obtain a licence without unnecessary delays and whether a Zimbabwean product can compete in Zambia, South Africa, Kenya or anywhere else in the world,” she said.
Despite Zimbabwe’s potential, she said she is concerned by the gap between the country’s capacity and its actual productivity.
She identified the high cost of doing business, regulatory complexity, infrastructure gaps, access to finance, skills mismatches and logistics challenges as key impediments.
“Competitiveness is a race that never stops,” Mrs Chimuka said.
“Our competitors are reforming, digitising, investing in technology, improving infrastructure and developing their human capital. If we move slowly or stand still, we effectively move backwards.”
To address this, the NCC launched the National Competitiveness Strategy 2026–2030 at the 2026 Competitiveness Summit in Bulawayo.
The strategy is built around four interconnected “Gears”: Stability and Governance; Finance and Markets; Infrastructure and Human Capital; and Resilience.
Mrs Chimuka said the priority is to make doing business easier through regulatory impact assessments, simplified licensing and lower compliance costs, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises.
The second is to strengthen local industries and increase value addition.
The third entails building foundations for sustainable competitiveness, including better infrastructure, energy, transport, digital services and stronger university-industry links. The NCC is also moving away from relying solely on global rankings.
Mrs Chimuka said indices such as the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index and the World Bank’s Doing Business Index have limitations, including perception-based proxies that do not capture Zimbabwe’s informal economy or local supply chains.
Instead, the commission has developed the Rural and Urban Councils Competitiveness Index (RUCCI) with the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency, covering all 92 local authorities.
The index examines governance efficiency, infrastructure, economic dynamism, innovation, resilience and cleanliness. A National Competitiveness Baseline Survey is also under way.
“This type of data can tell us: Where is the problem? Who is experiencing it? How significant is it? What is causing it? And did the reform actually work?” Mrs Chimuka said.
“That is much more useful for policymaking than simply knowing that Zimbabwe is ranked number X.”
Mrs Chimuka called on the private sector to provide evidence on regulatory and cost constraints and labour to focus on productivity and skills and academia to embed competitiveness in curricula and conduct rigorous research.
Reflecting on her tenure, she said she was most proud of the growing recognition that competitiveness must be measured and acted upon as a national issue.
She wished that the baseline survey and RUCCI had started earlier.
“The value of research is not the report itself; it is the change that follows from the report,” she said.
She said competitiveness must become a national imperative, requiring a mindset shift from every Zimbabwean.
“We must move from asking, ‘What can Zimbabwe give me?’ to also asking, ‘What value can I create for Zimbabwe and for the world?’” Mrs Chimuka said.
“A competitive Zimbabwe is not about improving a ranking on a table. It is about building an economy in which Zimbabwean businesses can thrive, Zimbabweans can find productive work, our exports can compete internationally and citizens can enjoy a better quality of life. As we say, ‘Nyika inovakwa nevene vayo’ — a nation is built by its own people.”
