GOVERNMENT has promised to resurrect an industry revival fund and make it more accessible, as it moves to rescue ailing industries.
BY MTHANDAZO NYONI
In a media briefing after touring companies in Bulawayo, Industry minister Mike Bimha said companies in Zimbabwe were struggling due to lack of funding and cheap imports from other countries.
To counter that, he said the government was working tirelessly to revive the Distressed and Marginalised Areas Fund (Dimaf).
“We want to revisit the issue of Dimaf in terms of making it bigger and more accessible. I’m sure we can do that so that we can continue to have companies accessing a little bit of funding and making a difference to companies,” Bimha, who is attending the on-going Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries congress, said.
Dimaf was launched in 2011 to revive companies in Bulawayo and other cities, with a kitty of $40 million. The government and Old Mutual were supposed to inject $20 million each, but the former struggled to meet its end of the agreement. Since 2011, 48 companies, about half of them from Bulawayo, have received loans worth $28 million from the fund. Companies hardest hit by the economic challenges of the past decade were mainly located in Bulawayo, once the country’s industrial hub that employed thousands of people. However, Dimaf continues to be a contentious issue, with some companies in the designated areas complaining that accessing the fund was almost impossible.
It is estimated that more than 100 companies have closed shop in Bulawayo since 2009, leaving more than 20 000 workers jobless and their dependents wallowing in poverty.
Bimha said a number of companies in the country were competing with cheap imports from countries such as China, India and South Africa, hence, the government’s intervention to introduce Statutory Instrument 64 of 2016.
