LOCAL companies have been urged to mechanise to keep pace with the rest of the world or risk languishing behind, industry officials have warned.
BY MTHANDAZO NYONI
Speaking at the Mechanisation for Industrialisation conference held in Bulawayo yesterday at the ongoing Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF), captains of industry said the country was lagging behind in terms of mechanisation, which would have a negative effect in the long term.
The conference was a joint-partnership between the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI), the ZITF and Alpha Media Holdings (AMH), whose main purpose is to link industry and original equipment manufacturers.
“We need to retool. We have had many years where we have actually not been able to retool industry because of various factors. When you are going to the industry, you find that we are running on antiquated machinery and that needs to change,” said Datlabs chief executive officer, Todd Moyo, in his presentation at the conference.
“We are talking about products coming in from outside at a lower cost and of better quality and we are saying our consumers want the best out there. They are not going to be patriotic and buy products that are of poor quality and expensive.”
He said it was time local industry catches up “with retooling and mechanisation”, so that we can be competitive as well.
Moyo said industry could not continue making excuses that they have been isolated, have had sanctions or people do not like them.
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“We really need to keep to standards when we are producing products. We cannot pretend that somebody should feel pity for us because we have not been able to retool.”
He said mechanisation was a must and not an option, adding that even in difficult times, companies needed to retool.
“You have seen companies that continued to mechanise in the difficult period, they are doing well,” he said.
He said the country was flooded by grey imports from far away countries like Pakistan, such as cement, wondering how such a heavy product “comes all the way from Pakistan into Harare and beat us on prices here?”
Moyo says he believes that companies that were investing in such difficult times were going to reap big in the future.
CZI president Busisa Moyo said in order to become more competitive on the global marketplace, local industries should not recoil from purchasing updated and current technology.
He said about 44% of their companies were planning to retool this year.
Last year, 47% of the companies retooled.
The CZI boss said his organisation was working on internal devaluation to lower the cost of doing business.
“We are too expensive to export. Consumers locally will continue choosing cheap foreign goods. Internal devaluation will address the issue of cost, otherwise we can only lobby for protectionist policies but at the end of the day it’s about cost.”
Filmatic Packaging Systems managing director Riaan Van Zyl, who gave the keynote address, said his company was ready to work with Zimbabwean companies who want to retool.
He said due to lack of mechanisation, companies from South Africa and Zambia were taking over the Zimbabwean market.
AMH managing director Vincent Kahiya said there was need to eliminate an adversarial relationship between government and industry, adding that would improve economic development.
