Smuggling chokes local biscuit producers

BULAWAYO headquartered sweets and biscuits producer, Arenel Foods (Pvt) Limited, has urged the Government to tighten border controls saying its business viability was being crippled by the influx of cheap biscuits into the local market.

Briefing Finance, Economic Development and Investment Promotion Minister, Professor Mthuli Ncube, who visited the Arenel factory last Friday, the company’s compliance officer, Mr Stephen Ncube, said their business was being hampered by rampant smuggling and appealed for Government protection.

“Smuggling is seriously impacting local industries, especially the biscuit manufacturers,” he said.

“You will find that there is now a product that has flooded the market and obviously that product is not coming through the formal channels. They are not paying Value Added Tax, they are not paying duty but we are actually under siege as the biscuit manufacturing industry from that product,” said Mr Ncube.

Arenel Foods (Pvt) Limited

In his response, Prof Ncube said the Government was aware of the smuggling challenge hence it has adopted tight mitigation measures such as deployment of drones, fast cargo scanners and electronic cargo tracking systems to increase surveillance in all hotspot areas.

He said the interventions would help bring culprits to book and reduce the loss of critical revenue, which the Treasury needs for financing development projects.

“As Government, we commit to dealing with the issue of smuggling and recently we launched this drone monitoring programme in Beitbridge,” said Prof Ncube.

“We know that this is not enough and we know that there is a human element, which is often the problem. Machines don’t smuggle, it is humans who sm uggle, so, it is the human element that we need to stamp out the issue of smuggling,” said the minister.

Smuggling has been identified as the major contributor towards the plight of local industries as the imported products tend to be of cheap quality and unfairly compete with local products.

What worsens the situation is that the smuggled products would not have paid duty and also not subjected to health and standard compliance regulations. — -chronicle..zw