eBusiness Weekly
Michael Tome
Public and private sector entities should prioritise local procurement to promote growth of local industries and the upcoming Zimbabwe National Industrial Development Policy (ZNIDP) should be used to leverage the opportunities in public procurement, reduce the country’s trade deficit, address market failures and foster development.
Just like what has been advocated for by the Local Content Policy, ZNIDP should stimulate the use of local factors of production, such as labour, capital, goods, services, technology and research and development to create value in the domestic economy.
Business member organisations have been at the forefront of advocating for a more viable, inclusive, sustainable and internally acceptable industry support system based on incentives for increased value chain-based local production.
The main advocate for local procurement (Buy Zimbabwe) and its partners have been at the forefront of demanding local procurement by government and other sectors which are key importers.
Zimbabwe has a stubbornly high import bill, that needs to be curbed before it slides back to be a wholesale economy as once experienced in the past decade.
On the contrary, the country has an increasing, but comparatively low export performance, driven largely by primary and un-beneficiated products from mining and agriculture.
According to analysts, Government policies should direct individual and corporate behaviour towards local consumption of goods and services, even through fiscal and monetary incentives, and the creation of a conducive and competitive environment for these changed behaviours to bear fruit.
Experts say increasing local procurement is necessary for increased shareholder wealth creation, and will imperatively spur fiscal inflows and mainly preserve existing jobs with the potential to create more.
This is considered a major milestone as the country moves to attain accelerated national economic development towards Vision 2030.
The development comes at a time when Zimbabwe is grappling with incessant imports of goods that can be made locally from as little as toothpicks to heavy machinery.
While addressing delegates at the stakeholder validation workshop on the draft Zimbabwe Industrial Development Policy for the period 2024-2030, Buy Zimbabwe general manager, Alois Burutsa, said companies both public and private should prioritise local procurement for merchandise that could be secured locally.
“In the pillars of the upcoming Zimbabwe National Industrial Development Policy (ZNIDP) Government should make a deliberate effort to support local companies, because without Government support this local content drive will not succeed.
“Let us look at the bus manufacturing sector, where those guys have so much capacity but are idle, but we currently have a lot of buses coming into the country, why not support the local capacity that they have so that we use that.
“Government and private sector should lead in this procurement drive be it furniture, uniforms for Government anything, government is the biggest buyer in any economy so there needs to be a very deliberate effort to support local,” said Burutsa.
He said this initiative should also be a norm for the private sector players as they also constitute a significant chunk of the procurement arm.
Another player, Tich Hwengwere, said the government should establish mechanisms to ensure that some commodities are not hoarded into the country nicodemously just for local packaging.
“We will continue to push for the production and preference for good quality compliant Zimbabwean products which is a plus to Zimbabwe as it creates jobs and wealth for locals.
“We need to invest in local content verification and standardisation process because there are a lot of products that are found on the local shelves, but those are just foreign products with a local covering,” said Hwengwere.
Stakeholders showed concern on growing imports of a number of basic goods some of which are produced locally, calling for responsible authorities to take action against imports of such.
There is a necessity to buy quality local products and services so that local industries realise growth and development.
The 2024-2030 policy intends to facilitate growth, productivity improvement, transformation, and competitiveness through accelerating investment in Zimbabwe’s Industrial sector.
It aims to attain a manufacturing sector growth rate of at least two percent per annum, to grow manufacturing sector investment by three percent per annum, and to increase manufactured exports by 10 percent per annum.
The policy is earmarked to increase the share of manufacturing value added (MVA) in GDP to 20 percent by 2030, while growing the share of manufacturing employment to a total of 20 percent by the same year.
This draft policy is informed by Vision 2030, the National Development Strategy 1 (NDS1), as well as regional and international policies on industrialisation.
