CZI to set up roadmap to revive farming sector

Business Reporter
THE Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries is in the process of setting up an agri-business forum with farmers to devise a roadmap to revive the sector, an official has said. CZI president Mr Busisa Moyo said the industry representative body has already established an ad hoc committee to engage farmers on a sustainable strategy to revive the sector. He said Zimbabwe’s industrial base has been built on the foundation of a vibrant agricultural sector and it is critical that a forum be created at the top stakeholder grouping. The sector provides more than 60 percent of manufacturing industry’s raw material requirements.

This comes at a time when Government has been urged to aggressively engage private companies in the agricultural value chain to come up with incentives that would to encourage them to support agriculture through financing mechanisms such as contract farming. “As CZI, we need to interface with farmers through their representative bodies to discuss value chain linkages starting with the farmer,” Mr Moyo said in an interview.

“We need programmes targeted at that; to deal with issues such as contract farming,” said Mr Moyo. Analysts say the agri-business forum is a welcome development as this will allow industry stakeholders to give focus to the sector which has the potential to turn around the economy.

“The creation of the agribusiness forum will enable dialogue around the lessons that can be learnt from the experiences of other nations in driving agri-business,” one economist said. “Opportunities exist for driving agribusiness both from the perspective of higher value downstream local beneficiation as well as upstream local production of inputs industry.”

Agri-business provides a contiguous economic development due to low level of complexity from the perspective of technology. This makes the process of technological learning simpler and faster, thus enabling the sector to be a catalyst for economic transformation. Food industry, leather and textiles in particular have been identified as low hanging fruit and priority diversification areas for Zimbabwe by the Atlas of Economic Complexity produced by the Harvard Centre for International Development. The tobacco industry is another case in point. “Investment in downstream value addition will have a huge effect on employment creation and overall economic performance.

“Such issues should therefore be at the forefront of CZI’s agribusiness forum,” said a researcher with a Harare based Non-Governmental Organization involved in capacity building. The shortage of agricultural primary products has forced local companies to import to raw materials resulting in loss of employment and revenue to the fiscus.

For instance, oilseed processors in Zimbabwe are bracing for a serious shortage of the raw materials following poor yields in cotton and soya beans. Only 40 000 tonnes of soya beans and 50 000 tonnes of cotton seed are expected, against the processors’ combined annual seed requirement of 350 000 tonnes, according to Zimbabwe Oil Expressers Association.

Millers have drawn up a plan to import 750 000 tonnes of maize until the next harvest to keep their mills running.