adminSpeaking by telephone from Harare yesterday, CZI chief executive Mr Clifford Sileya said they had begun updating the questionnaires in preparation for the industrial survey.
“We are yet to start the manufacturing survey for this year, we are presently updating the questionnaires which will be sent to industries in the next two months. We don’t want to guess the level of capacity utilisation and through the survey we hope to get factual information from people (manufacturing sector),” he said.
The liberalisation of the economy in February 2009 has seen capacity utilisation improving remarkably although not at the pace industrialists would have wanted.
Following the formation of the inclusive Government in February 2009, Government targeted to increase capacity utilisation from about 10 percent to 60 percent by the end of the year.
However, due to a number of challenges facing the economy, capacity utilisation in local industries has increased to 57,2 percent according to a manufacturing survey report released by CZI at the end of last year.
“When we dollarised, capacity utilisation increased to 33 percent at the end of 2009, in 2010 it improved to 43 percent and last year it was 57 percent. We hope this year it will increase by at least 10 percent although the economy is still affected by major constraints such as erratic power supplies and lack of liquidity in the market,” said Mr Sileya.
As the economy continues to suffer from liquidity crisis, some of the local firms have adopted a number of working capital raising initiatives to recapitalise their operations but many companies still faced challenges.
Mr Sileya said some of the manufacturing firms recently negotiated with Zesa so that they got ring-fenced power tariffs.
“Some of the companies have negotiated with Zesa to have ring-fenced power tariffs. Although the mechanism provides uninterrupted power supplies, it is an expensive way of getting power assurance and given the situation we are operating under in terms of power supply, the companies will rather pay so that they continue producing uninterrupted,” he said.
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