CZI to shift focus toward market share growth

Business Writer

The Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) will shift focus toward policies and strategies that will help local companies increase their share of both the domestic and regional markets.

CZI is currently implementing a 3 phase Industrialisation Strategic Framework that started in mid last year.

The first phase, meant for the period between June 2019 and June 2020 was focused on establishing a stable and competitive local currency.

“This phase aims at addressing the macro-economic situation which is the main impediment to growth in the short run.

Specifically, it aims at increasing confidence in a local and more competitive currency, ” according to CZI.

The auction system which has so far helped stabilise the exchange rate and has seen businesses access foreign currency on the formal market is one of CZI’s many proposals to authorities.

In it’s latest annual report for the year to June 2020, CZI said the next phase will be focused on domestic and regional market capture, export diversification, and integration in regional and global value chain.

This will be for the period 2019 to 2030.

Said CZI:

“Once a stable and competitive local currency is in place, the country is ready for capturing the growing domestic and regional markets and tapping into global value chains.

“This will require attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to Africa which is to a large part driven by accessing the market rather than efficiency.”

Therefore, the strategic focus is to integrate with regional markets and to become the most efficient location for production within the region.

From 2030 and beyond, the goal is on specialisation in lucrative and labour and or skills intensive production.

The ultimate goal for the business representative body is to double the share of manufacturing value added in GDP to 20 percent by 2030 from the current 8.9 percent.

CZI strategy is to also increase the share of medium-and-high-technology production in total manufacturing value added from less than 15 percent to 35 percent by 2030 as well as increase share of industrial employment from 7 percent to 40 percent by 2030.