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Dumisani Nsingo, Senior Business Reporter
THE Government has set aside funds to recapitalise companies that have benefited from the import restrictions that were put in place in July to control flooding of the market by foreign goods.
In an interview, Industry and Commerce Minister Dr Mike Bimha said although it was difficult to effectively measure the impact of Statutory Instrument (SI) 64 of 2016-Control of Goods Open General Imports Licence (OGIL) introduced by the Government in July, most companies whose goods were placed under the legislation are recording improved productivity and profitability.
He, however, said the ministry had put in place an evaluation and monitoring committee to obtain information on the impact of SI 64 of 2016.
“Most of the companies that are happy don’t even want to wait for the evaluation committee. They phone and write to us thanking us (for putting in place SI 64 of 2016). A lot of them say they didn’t know that this would change their fortunes. They have increased their sales, market share and capacity utilisation . . .
“The CZI (Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries) and ZNCC (Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce) are also making a separate exercise of just collecting that information (on the impact of SI 64 of 2016) and again from the feedback we are getting its really working . . . ,” said Dr Bimha.
He said a number of companies were now applying to have their products included under import restrictions further stating that “so we believe and it confirms what we had thought earlier on that we needed to give our industries time to breathe”.
SI 64 of 2016, temporarily regulates the importation of certain products that can be produced locally.
Some of the products which were removed from the OGIL include bottled water, mayonnaise, salad cream, peanut butter, jams, yoghurts, flavoured milks, dairy juice blends, ice creams, cultured milk, cheese, white petroleum jellies, body creams, plastic pipes and cooking oil. The legislation also controls importation of second hand tyres, urea and ammonium fertilisers, tile adhesives and tylon, shoe polish, synthetic hair products, building materials and furniture.
Dr Bimha said the Government was already putting in place measures to further support companies whose goods were placed under SI 64 of 2016 through “targeted funding”.
“We need to support those that have been supported by SI 64 of 2016 because we want them to re-tool and re-equip.
Re-tooling and re-equipping is a function of resources, funding and we now have the funds for those companies that need to re-tool and re-quip as a result of the support that they have been given (through SI 64 of 2016),” said Dr Bimha.
“So those who want the funding must approach us.”
He further said the Government was working on crafting a Local Procurement Policy.
“We want to support it (SI of 2016) further, one by funding and we also want to buttress it by coming up with a Local Procurement Policy and that way we believe we will buttress SI 64 of 2016 and also get our people to have that mindset to want to buy local.
“There is a lot of consultation we are doing and there is a lot of work that has been done by various bodies including our academia. I wouldn’t give you a timeframe but it’s a must that we need that policy to buttress SI 64 of 2016,” said Dr Bimha.
He, however, urged manufacturers to produce quality products so as to improve on their competitiveness.
“More importantly for our manufacturers, we say to them if you want support you also have to play your part. Quality, pricing distribution, efficiencies all these issues you must attend to them because in the end we can’t continue giving support, at one time these support measures will have to go away and companies must stand on their own but this is the time for them to prepare for that.
“There are a number of issues to do with WTO (World Trade Organisation) and Sadc (Southern African Development Community) trade protocol which we need to go through and that exercise is not easy. We are at the moment actually waiting for support from Sadc experts to come and do the justification of SI 64 of 2016 and it takes time . . . so we want to use Local Procurement Policy to do that bit,” said Dr Bimha.
@DNsingo
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