Sidumisile Mabena
Judith Phiri [email protected]
THE Government has reaffirmed its support for the cotton to clothing value chain, commending players in the sector such as Paramount Garment’s Archer Clothing for employment creation, a key drivers of the economic transformation agenda towards Vision 2030.
Speaking after touring Archer Clothing in Bulawayo on Friday, the Minister of Industry and Commerce Nqobizitha Mangaliso Ndlovu said the visit was inspired by that the cotton to clothing value chain is one of the priority agro-value chains that they have identified.
“We are working very closely with the Ministry of Agriculture to see how we can really focus on these value chains as key drivers of our economic transformation agenda towards Vision 2030. Paramount Garments is one of the leading companies in the sector and this is one of their branches in Bulawayo, Archer Clothing,” he said.
“It is employing more than 1 000 people, most of them very young. In fact, I will check with them if they are benefiting from the Youth Employment Tax Incentive because I was really pleased to see that most of the people in the production floors are young people. They are producing not less than 120 000 units every month and more than half of that is for the export market.”
He said there are a number of areas where Paramount Garments need support, but they were really happy to see them doing well in the clothing industry.The Minister, however, bemoaned low uptake of company’s products from the domestic market.
“Be it Government institutions, the private sector, mining companies or the agriculture sector, we are going to be engaging to see where we can promote local uptake because our focus and thrust is that as a country we need to support local production. That will enable them to really have these economies of scale and be able to export more competitively,” he added.
“Overall, I am very happy that we have this kind of production in the cotton to clothing sector which gives us hope and room to really go back to support the cotton grower as well as the entire value chain and to localise most of the raw materials.”
He said Paramount Garments was still bringing in a lot of raw materials from outside the country, but at the same time buying quite substantial stocks from David Whitehead which is beginning to create the local synergies.
Minister Ndlovu said the agriculture sector and industry need to collaborate in upscaling the cotton to clothing industry.
“As I have highlighted, we have identified 15 critical value chains that we will be prioritising and cotton to clothing is one of them. We are finalising again the finer details on these value chains just to look at how we can grow them,” he said.
“We are trying to look at the nodes that require maximum support from the Government and we believe that in the next few weeks we will be able to make part of the work we are doing public. We have looked at the entire ecosystem of the agro-value chain.”
“As you know we normally say that industry requires 60 percent of its raw materials from agriculture but agriculture will also need about 40 percent of its raw materials from industry.”
Online Reporter