Clothing industry earns $45 million from exports

The Herald

29 April 1989

ZIMBABWE’S clothing industry has more than doubled its exports over the past two years, earning Zimbabwe millions of dollars in foreign currency.

Zimbabwe Clothing Council chairman, Mr Denis Yule, said yesterday that the industry had increased its exports considerably despite many problems it was facing.

“We have opened a very large market in Europe and the United States, and one of the pleasing aspects of our exports is that we have now started making significant inroads into PTA and SADCC countries where exports have increased by more than 500 percent in the past two years.”

Last year, the industry earned the country over $45 million in foreign currency, a 37 percent increase over 1987 exports and over 145 percent more than 1986.

“I think I would say that at the moment the clothing industry is buoyant, but we face a number of problems which, if not solved, could seriously affect our export performance and reverse the trend of the last few years,” he said.

One of the most difficult problems facing the industry was obtaining locally produced fabrics of a sufficiently high quality in a wide variety to satisfy their customers’ requirements on the international market.

The local textile industry which produces the yarn and fabrics is critically short of foreign currency to buy spares for their plant, dye-stuff and chemicals. He said the situation often caused delays in the delivery of fabrics to the clothing industry which was unacceptable to their international customers.

“Our biggest problem is obtaining raw materials and keeping competitive on the export market. As an industry, we are not happy with the quality of cloth we get from the textiles,” he said.

The poor quality of the cotton lint used for spinning the yarn was also causing considerable concern to both the textile and clothing industries. “Unless this improves, there could be serious repercussions affecting the exports of both industries,” he said. Foreign currency is not the only worry for the clothing industry.

Lessons for today:

• Zimbabwe still has a clothing and textile industry but it is much smaller, weaker, and very different from the one described in 1989, and the spread of runners’ shops (resale of second-hand clothes) is a big part of why. However, the scale, export capacity, and integration that existed in the late 1980s has largely collapsed.

 

• In 1989, the industry earned over US$45 million in exports, served Europe, the US, PTA and SADCC markets. It was linked to local cotton farming and textile mills and employed thousands of workers in formal jobs. That industrial ecosystem is now fragmented.
• An unregulated second-hand clothing market can destroy local manufacturing if domestic industry is not protected or supported. Most clothing activity today focuses on school uniforms, work wear, local fashion labels for urban markets and Informal tailoring. Export-led mass production, like in 1989, is now rare. It has shifted from exports to survival production.
• in 1989. The rise of runners’ shops reflects economic survival, not industrial success. A country that abandons manufacturing becomes dependent on imports and informal trade and loses jobs, skills, and foreign currency.