Polad thumbs up strides taken to revive Bulawayo industry

THE Political Actors Dialogue (Polad) forum has commended strides being made towards resuscitating industries in Bulawayo saying the city still has potential to restore its yester-year manufacturing status.

Despite operating challenges such as inadequate access to funding, aging equipment and pressure from cheap imports, the city’s industry has recently been showing signs of positive recovery in response to supportive Government measures.

Across the country, manufacturing sector capacity utilisation jumped to about 60 percent in 2021 compared to 47 percent in 2020, according to official estimates.

Members of the Polad Economic Committee who visited Bulawayo on Monday, conducted a tour of selected industries, which include United Refineries, Bit Bags and cement producer, PPC Zimbabwe and expressed optimism about growth prospects.

Pretoria Portland Cement (PPC)

Committee chairman, Mr Trust Chikohora, said there was a need to finetune financing support measures and scaling up market linkages to buttress industry growth.

“The backbone of the industry is there, capacity is there, equipment, buildings and plants are there but we just need to make things right so that companies produce more,” he said in an interview after the tour.

“There is need for funding, linkages and support even from Government, support for key value chains so that we increase our competitiveness and make sure that our cost of production is competitive regionally in order to spur exports.”

Mr Chikohora said the visited companies were struggling to export despite having a solid history of exporting and attributed the challenges to cost of production management issues.

He said companies like PPC have higher capacity to meet demand of cement in the country but were hindered by the influx of cheap imports.

“PPC together with other local cement companies have excess capacity to supply cement in this country and it’s upon us to support local products and make sure that we purchase from our own producers,” said Mr Chikohora.

“Even Government and other big users should take advantage of the capacity that is within our industries. In terms of competition coming from imported cement, it’s Government’s duty to see how we can ensure that we fully utilise the capacity that we have.”

Mr Trust Chikohora

PPC head of sales and marketing, Mr Nkosana Mapuma, said the country has the capacity to produce 2,6 million tons of cement per annum with demand hovering around 1,5 to 1,6 million tons per annum.

“That means we can produce enough to cater for the demand of this country. Its unfortunate that we still see imports coming in and they are eating into the market share of local players,” he said.

“That means we won’t produce as much as we are supposed to in order to cover costs and enjoy economies of scale. “So, we need to give local producers an opportunity to increase their utilisation and enjoy economies of scale and satisfy local market.”

Mr Mapuma said production costs were on the steep side and made reference to transport and logistics charges and attendant inefficiencies, which he said were chewing into the company’s revenue.- chronicle.cozw