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Sithembiso Nyoni
MY ministry’s mandate is to identify, develop and nurture our people into entrepreneurship through (small to medium enterprises) SMEs and cooperatives, to create employment for themselves and others, to end poverty through creating their own wealth rather than handouts and charity.
To that end let me summarise some of the achievements this year. In order for SMEs to be competitive, we need to train them so that they are proper business people. We train them in how to start and run a business, business management, ethics, conflict management, marketing and above all branding their new products.
This year we trained 12 152 males, 15 566 women, a total of 27 718 SMEs in various skills to help them do their businesses properly. On cooperatives, we do pre-registration training. So far we have done 225 cooperatives before they are trained and 129 after they are registered, 235 before they are registered and we have registered so far 4 549.
The total number of functioning cooperatives in housing, savings and credit, fishing, agriculture, services, mining and manufacturing is up to 7 204.
We have trained SMEs in practical skills. We sent an officer to India recently to train on value addition and since his return, the officer has trained 203 SMEs in Mbare (Harare), Bulawayo and Umguza in vegetables and fruit value addition. We are ready to roll out this programme next year.
Through Indo-Zimbabwe we are training SMEs and people at universities and colleges to design and manufacture products. So far we have trained 500 who have come from NSSA, Chinhoyi University and other schools.
In market access we have facilitated 1 967 SMEs to access markets in the region.
The National Handicraft Centre has now started connecting our village craft to overseas markets. I have taken some of the MPs from Buhera, Gwanda, Chiredzi, Mwenezi and Matobo to the National Handicraft to see which craft can be sold.
On linkages we try to have inclusive and pro-poor linkages where we link SMEs to SMEs, SMEs to corporatives and SMEs to large corporatives.
Some SMEs make building materials for the big housing projects. Another group of SMEs is linked to big companies such as Cairns and Bata Shoe Company.
We have trained 174 SMEs from Murewa, Maphisa, Masvingo and Gweru in hide collection and preservation and we link them to the tanning companies. I have heard a discussion with the Minister of Industry (Dr Mike Bimha), there are some companies that are growing and then killing companies. An example are the cooking oil companies, Harare had 14 SMEs that were making cooking oil and supplying livestock by-products. But the cooking oil companies are importing semi-processed cooking oil products and therefore closing SMEs out.
We want to ask the Ministry of Industry to take some of the semi-processed cooking oil from SMEs rather than taking all of it from outside.
As import substitution through Indo-Zimbabwe we have got companies that are no longer importing their components. The first one is the Deva Beverages that is now producing 2,1 million bottles inside Zimbabwe being led by SMEs and moulds are made from Indo-Zimbabwe.
The biscuit companies are doing the same and also mill plough for Harare Power Station is also benefiting from this.
In conclusion the funding for SMEs is improving after the budget. We want to thank Cde Chinamasa (Finance Minister), SMEDCO is now going to start disbursing funding in the first quarter of the year and we want to ensure that 50 percent of the funding goes to women.
Extracted from Minister Nyoni’s speech presented during the recent Zanu-PF Conference in Masvingo on milestones achieved by SMEs in 2016.
Online Reporter