Chronicle Editor
Business Reporter
THE 7th Buy Local Summit kicks off in Victoria Falls tomorrow with delegates expected to deliberate on strategies to consolidate consumption of locally manufactured products.
The annual event is organised by Buy Zimbabwe.
Company general manager, Mr Munyaradzi Hwengwere, said this year’s summit focuses on deepening the usage of locally manufactured products in order to promote industrialisation in Zimbabwe.
“What is significant about the forum is the quality of delegates and not their numbers.
“This also explains why we will have among our expected delegates Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa who will recognise Zimbabwe’s top 100 brands.
“Industry and Commerce Minister Dr Mike Bimha as well as several captains of industry from sectors such as manufacturing, mining and finance will also present papers.
“What is critical is a special support that we would want to use to inform the local content policy,” he said.
The three-day event, which ends on Friday, will be held under the theme, “Driving industrialisation through local content”.
As part of deepening industrialisation through local content, delegates will also discuss about the investment gap and how an optimum environment for enhanced investment inflows into the productive sectors can be enhanced.
Last year, the Government through the Ministry of Industry and Commerce promulgated Statutory Instrument 64 of 2016 with a view of controlling imported products that were flooding the local market while stifling competitiveness of domestic industries.
Mr Hwengwere said through S.I.64/2016 industries whose products were listed under the policy were able to boost their capacity while at the same time creating employment across the value chain system in different sectors
Buy Zimbabwe said experiences since the enunciation of the import management scheme and the S.I.64/2016 have proved that Zimbabwe needs a long-term import management strategy to strike the right balance of trade, local production and create a healthy environment.
“The 2017 summit, dubbed the local content indaba, provides an opportunity to chart a strategic direction to help boost the economy through deliberate preference of our local goods and services anchored on an incentive based local content policy, local content rating and plugging investment gaps in the productive sectors of the economy,” said Buy Zimbabwe.
It is believed that the Buy Local Summit will avail immense opportunities to companies whose stakeholders would attend the event.
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