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The Buy Zimbabwe campaign’s seminar last week raised a number of pertinent issues and set out several solutions.
It is fairly obvious that Zimbabwean industry is starting to recover from the meltdown in the hyper-inflationary era, although this recovery is slow. But new industrial businesses are opening and many older businesses are turning the corner back into profitability as they forget their arrogance forged when they held legal monopolies and start learning how to operate in a competitive environment.
The general message has been absorbed by everyone. A Zimbabwean company can compete fairly easily with a foreign supplier so long as it delivers the right quality, at the right price and at the right time, and does this consistently.
The build up of local goods on most supermarket shelves shows that this recovery is in progress.
Many people like the idea of buying Zimbabwean, for a number of reasons. First there is that feeling, and we should not ignore altruism, that doing so benefits everyone in the country.
The bigger fraction of our money spent in Zimbabwe means the more jobs and general development our money generates.
Secondly there is the ease of supply and the ease of having complaints heard and attended to.
When the factory is down the road, there is a negligible time lag between order and delivery, or at least there should be.
And if something goes wrong, such as the odd dud item escaping quality control, getting the problem fixed involves a phone call and a short journey for a truck to deliver the replacement, rather than some long complex cross-border deal.
The seminar noted that helping Zimbabwean industry involves a lot more than just Government action.
In fact, there is not a lot the Government can do, besides giving first option for its own needs to local suppliers.
There is now a small duty on most imports, but this is not much more than local suppliers have to pay in the way of taxes.
The push for free trade in much of Africa means severe protectionist taxes are simply not allowed. The main advantage local suppliers have is being local.
All those industrialists who have turned the corner or who have created new businesses show that there was nothing terminal about the decline in Zimbabwe’s industry and that foreign suppliers, while welcome to compete, and that competition has done wonders for Zimbabwean quality and customer care, are not going to automatically dominate the market.
There are several approaches. Delta, one of the first companies to turn the corner, was helped by its external shareholder to commission new equipment, built on its famous distribution network and local support and saw off foreign competition that had taken over most of the market.
Now it dominates its markets, as it did in the past, but dominates because it delivers the right quality at the right price with the right support, rather than because imports are banned.
Innscor, a relatively new giant, has moved dramatically in a few years from being a retailer to being a manufacturer, largely buying up existing businesses but adding capital, a degree of vertical integration and a lot of expertise.
The model has resuscitated several concerns and now that the Government is concerned over potential monopolies, the company will soon be forced to look to new ventures for expansion rather than buying competitors. And trailing these sort of giants are some newcomers, putting together smart business models and taking on the big old timers.
Buy Zimbabwe will work, but the fundamentals of consistent quality and competitive pricing have to be in place.
Online Reporter