Online Reporter
Nelson Gahadza
Senior Business Reporter
ZIMBABWE’S push to promote locally-produced goods must be backed by a firm commitment to strengthen industrial value chains, capacitating domestic firms and unlocking patient capital from the financial sector, Speaker of Parliament Advocate Jacob Mudenda has said.
Addressing stakeholders at the Buy Zimbabwe, Buy Local Conference on Friday, Adv Mudenda stressed that the call to buy local would only yield meaningful economic transformation if industry is adequately supported to produce competitive, high-quality goods at scale.
He said retooling Zimbabwean industry was critical and could be accelerated through strategies such as reverse engineering, an approach successfully adopted by countries like Japan and China to build robust manufacturing bases and improve product quality.
“The imperative to buy local products must therefore be accompanied by an equally resolute commitment to capacitate Zimbabwean industry. Without production capacity, the buy local agenda cannot be sustained,” he said.
Adv Mudenda aimed at the country’s banking sector, accusing it of failing to provide long-term, patient capital required by the industry to retool and expand.
