CZI boss bows out

Mr Katsande has declined a sixth term at the helm of CZI to pave way for a new leader.

He had been nominated for re-election by the Matabeleland and Mashonaland chapters of the group and the industrial association. He was due for nomination at the congress on July 31-August 2 2013. Mr Katsande confirmed he would not stand for re-election, despite being requested by a number of CZI’s affiliates.

“I am not standing for another term (as president) at the annual congress in Bulawayo although there was an option for me to do that, not that I am not interested, but I have looked at what I have done for five terms,” he said.

As he bows out Mr Katsande said a lot needed to be done to address a multiplicity of woes facing local industry.

He said he would remain available to advise on various issues concerning the industry and the industrial body, whenever the need arose.

Mr Katsande said his biggest concern was the high rate at which the sector was losing manufacturing firms.

“My greatest concern is that the number of manufacturing companies is declining and only 50 percent are manufacturing companies and the other 50 percent are non-manufacturing. This is not a good trend,” he said.

As a result of the decline in manufacturing companies – after half of the industrial firms resorted to trading and services due to illegal sanctions-induced economic and financial constraints – the industrial body had less latitude for financial support than it had before.

Mr Katsande bemoaned the fact that as a country, there apparently has not been enough appreciation of the dire financial straits industry has lurched into.

He said it was “very important” to appreciate the indispensable role that the manufacturing industry played in Zimbabwe’s economic growth.

Mr Katsande said there was need to recognise, at national level, that the biggest and most successful economies today – the USA, Germany, Britain, Japan, China and the Asian Tigers – were built around a strong manufacturing sector.

“The history of mankind in the last 500 years shows that the world, in the last 500 years, has been built around manufacturing.”

In that regard, Mr Katsande said, addressing the sector’s challenges was not an option.
The sector was characterised by numerous company closures, largely due to financial constraints inhibiting recapitalisation to ensure efficiency, high cost of funding, low aggregate demand, high cost of utilities and external competition.

While industrial capacity, at worst, plummeted to as low as 10 percent at the height of illegal sanctions-induced economic instability and improved to about 50 percent since dollarisation in 2009, it has started falling and is now around 44 percent.