Call on industrial policy to promote SMEs growth

THE Bulawayo Chamber of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) says the revised Zimbabwe National Industrial Development Policy (ZNIDP) must promote growth of small businesses through unlocking increased access to funding and development of decent working spaces.

Government through the Ministry of Industry and Commerce is carrying out a stakeholder validation workshop on the draft ZNIDP with Bulawayo and Harare provinces already done.

The ZNIDP is the principal policy that drives the industrialisation agenda of the country.

The 2024-2030 policy will succeed the old blueprint, which was operationalised in 2019 and ends in December this year.

The 2024-2030 policy seeks 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 increase manufactured exports by 10 percent per annum.

The policy is earmarked at increasing the share of manufacturing value added (MVA) in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to 20 percent by 2030, while growing the share of manufacturing employment total to 20 percent by the same year.

Gross Domestic Product

The draft policy is informed by Vision 2030, the National Development Strategy 1 (NDS1), as well as regional and international policies on industrialisation.

Speaking after the Bulawayo stakeholder validation workshop on the draft ZNIDP, Bulawayo Chamber of SMEs, coordinator Mr Nketa Mangoye Dlamini said there is a need to ensure that SMEs graduate from one level to another through giving them a lot of support.

“What we need the policy to take care of is the de-emphasisation of SMEs being private companies. When someone starts an SME, Central Government and local authorities should not necessarily take it as a private entity but they should take interest in that particular organisation and some countries have done that and it has promoted growth of SMEs,” he said.

“Yes, the companies are private in terms of registration but for the interest of growing a rural area or town it comes upon Central Government and local authorities to actually encourage these companies to grow because if these companies grow, they increase the taxation base and gross domestic product and employment.

“We would love in the new policy to see a proper allocation of funds for the growth of SMEs in a mentorship or venture capital type of form and should be allocated either per province or per district.”

Mr Dlamini said as SMEs they wanted to see the policy addressing the issue of linkages between SMEs and large corporates.

“At one time Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) had a business linkages programme where SMEs were benefitting from large corporates. For instance, we had a situation where if a large corporate is doing its own printing or cleaning, it was then encouraged to do away with non-core business and subcontract other small businesses to develop SMEs,” he said.

CONFEDERATION of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI)

“With assistance from CZI we could look at what large corporates are doing then we encourage them to do core businesses to increase efficiency and then we try to use a contract system for SMEs. That’s the way small companies can grow.”

Backward and forward linkages with SMES is one of the key pillars of the ZNIDP 2024-20230. Recently, CZI revealed its intentions to renew linkages with SMEs with a view of incorporating the sector in its programmes as it seeks to create synergies and expose the sector to more markets.

SMEs have become a big economic force in the country and across the globe but most of them are still struggling to secure lucrative markets.

In Zimbabwe, the Government expects SMEs to play a pivotal role in transforming the economy towards an upper middle-income status by 2030.

This entails scaling up support for the sector by providing finance and working space to enable the sector to increase the production of quality goods and assist the sector in securing markets.

It is for this reason that the Government under the Second Republic recognises the role played by the sector and availed resources to upscale its growth.

Mr Dlamini also said the policy should address the issue of decent work space. — chronicle