Industrialist and Nestlé Zimbabwe managing director Kumbirayi Katsande (KK) recently bounced back at the helm of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI). NewsDay Business Reporter Victoria Mtomba (ND) spoke to him on his recent appointment and issues affecting industry. Below are excerpts of the interview.
ND: This is not the first time that you have been elected CZI president. What is it you are bringing to CZI as the new leader?
KK: I have been involved in one capacity or another with CZI since the early 1980s, first with the then Food Manufacturer’s Association. My participation has also coincided with tough times for the economy such as when we had mass stay-aways. That is when the Tripartite Negotiating Forum was formed when we met President Robert Mugabe in September 1998.
While we do not face such dramatic challenges now, we are still faced by huge hurdles especially for the manufacturing sector. You have seen in the media just how manufacturing companies are under severe pressure from the negative effects of competition from imports, aged and obsolete plant and equipment, poor infrastructure generally, which increases costs of production and the impact of a poorly performing agricultural sector. The question we have to deal with is what it is that as manufacturing we can do to influence government policies which touch on these factors that can enable or disable production. We need to think and act differently and with due speed because the consequences of a business –as –usual approach will be dire.
ND: The country’s manufacturing sector continues to face various challenges including lack of working capital, poor equipment and power shortages. What should be done to address these challenges?
KK: Manufacturing and agriculture are very demanding endeavours. Sadly this is still not recognised. By the time you sense trouble with these sectors, you have lost lots of ground. Once a manufacturing enterprise has collapsed, it is now next to impossible to resuscitate it. Not only are skills lost, there are other and possible more competitive suppliers from all over the world ready to step-in. So we should nurse every manufacturing entity we have in this country. We know that over 60% of goods in our supermarkets are imported. This statistic should be alarming to us. This means we are supporting jobs elsewhere when we have over 10 000 college and high school leavers each year who need gainful employment! Every manufacturing job must be saved.
This is a matter which is exercising our minds and we intend to propose ways to attend to some of these issues. We cannot as industry resolve this on our own. We need as always a sympathetic ear from the government and it is possible to work together because we have no other choice on this.
ND: Several funding facilities have been put in place to bail out industries, but most companies have been failing to access them. How best can funds be made available?
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KK: We need to be innovative about how to access funding. As business people this is what is expected of us. Honestly we cannot join the queue of citizens who want the government to disburse funds which do not exist. As industry, we should talk with the banking sector whose role it is to buy and sell money. We know that more can be done especially to fund infrastructure rehabilitation once we deal with the external debt issues, for example. Once Zesa can perform, then we do not need to invest in expensive emergency power generation.
ND: The country’s growth projections have been reviewed downwards. What is your take on this?
KK: This was already evident in January when CZI held an economic review meeting at which Professor (Tony) Hawkins warned us about this. The signs have been here for us to see. Again it is unfortunate that we are slow to act or to confront problems. We want to wait for the chair to be broken in pieces before we repair it. We have a responsibility to sense what is coming and to act to avoid it. As it is, we have taken the economic downturn as inevitable, yet we do not see the commensurate response such as how to stimulate economic growth and in the case of the survival of many enterprises.
We are fooled by the fact that supermarket shelves are full with imported products. Yet local agriculture and manufacturing is in deep crisis. Once agriculture fails to perform, industry follows and vice-versa. How do farmers and rural people buy what we manufacture if they do not have anything to sell or if they are not paid for what they have produced?
Again we need to think and act differently because the old formulas of waiting for the government to give money to marketing boards are a thing of the past. Other countries now use modern funding arrangements for agriculture such as links with processors.
