With imports now out, local is lekker

A visit to any local supermarket now tells a different story.

Not so long ago, one would be greeted with shelves lined up with imported basic commodities, especially from South Africa and Botswana.

The daring ones would bring such basic goods from as far away as China and Brazil and stock them in their shops.

Remember the days when you could find chickens from Brazil filing up fridges in supermarkets, and the various theories around how such chickens were bad for your health.

Some even went to the extent of saying a mass enhancement method, known as plumping, was used to increase the size of the Brazilian chickens.

Well, those were the days when the country relied almost entirely on imports to satisfy the local market with basic goods.

The advent of the New Dispensation in 2017 has changed all that, and this amazingly within a short period of time.

Almost all shelves in supermarkets and other food outlets are now filled with locally produced goods.

This is an indication of the achievements of President Mnangagwa’s government when it comes to the promotion of local industrial production and the plugging of imports.

The developments show the government is now on course with regards to import substitution industrialisation.

The production of more local goods simply indicates the exact situation that a number of industries are now up and running.

In the process, these industries have been creating employment for hundreds of people, hence the revelation by the National Social Security Authority (NSSA) that more than 170 000 new jobs have been created in various sectors of the economy since 2017.

Returns submitted by new employees at NSSA show that over 7 000 jobs have been created in the first four months of this year.

The employment figures are expected to continue on an upward trajectory considering that measures being implemented by the New Dispensation to stabilise the economy are starting to bear fruits.

The reawakening of industries is also attributed to the introduction of the Foreign Currency Auction system, which has made forex available for industries and other essential sectors.

This shows that the local manufacturing sector is taking advantage of several initiatives by government to reduce import dependency and boost local production.

President Mnangagwa last week said he had instructed the Ministry of Industry and Commerce to publish a list of imported goods, and then start ticking those that are being replaced by local productions.

The President was speaking at the Buy Zimbabwe awards in Harare.

This shows the confidence with which the New Dispensation is approaching economic revival and the measures it is instituting to ensure the country catches up in development.

Step by step, the country continues to tick down the imports, substituting them with locally manufactured goods, as the manufacturing sector capacity utilisation continues to rise.

What is required now is for local manufactures to work on their prices to discourage consumers from going for imports, which in most cases come with lower prices.

Import substitution industrialisation forms part of the National Development Strategy 1 and the achievement of an upper middle income economy by 2030, known as Vision 2030.

This comes through a deliberate drive to promote local production of goods.

Import substitution industrialisation is helping to enhance the economic development agenda, considering that relying on importing goods and services has always been known to “kill” local industries.

A lot of foreign currency is also required to import the goods.

The import substitution industrialisation which is being led by government will eventually lead to an increase in internal production, and the growth of the economy.

There is generally an increased call from economic development specialists for developing countries to seriously consider uplifting their local industries to produce competitive goods and services.

Import substitution industrialisation arose as a response to the developmental challenges faced by developing countries in the 1940s.

The rationale was to set up local industries which could provide manufactured goods for the domestic markets, thereby cancelling the need to use scarce foreign currency and thus improve a country’s balance of payment.

The concept is an inward-looking strategy in which domestic industries are developed to supply internal markets previously served through imports.

When it started taking root in the 1940s, import substitution industrialisation was widely viewed as an alternative to complement other development strategies being implemented by newly-independent states, especially in Africa.

It was a radical shift from the imports drive that had characterised most developing economies of that time, which had been incapacitated by the sudden flight of capital as colonialism came to an abrupt end.

There were three major reasons for pursuing import substitution industrialisation.

These were to bring about more rapid transfer of technological innovation in industry, in the process raising economy-wide productivity levels.

Other reasons were to have a greater absorption of labour in an era of rapid population and urban growth, and to bring about the movement of factors of production into industry.

The revival of the manufacturing sector, which has been one of the priorities of the New Dispensation, has restored attention on industries which had been lacking new technologies.

The establishment of innovation hubs across the country, some of which have been opened by President Mnangagwa, especially at universities, is expected to provide some of the technological solutions for local industries.

If import substitution industrialisation was a success in other countries like the Asian giants such as Singapore, China and South Korea, lessons can be learnt to make it even a bigger success in Zimbabwe.

Getting it right in various sectors, like what happened to agriculture this season, where a bumper harvest has been realised, will result in imports being knocked off.

The bumper harvest this season will result in saving of foreign currency by cutting the food import bill.

From now on, there is need to work on competitiveness to prepare for substituting imports with exports.

This can be enabled through value addition of local natural resources to make them attractive to foreign markets.

Value addition and beneficiation, apart from ensuring the country earns more in foreign currency, will make locally produced goods competitive on the regional and international markets.

The advent of Covid-19 and the lockdown associated with the disease compel countries like Zimbabwe to focus more on internal production of goods.

Economies that continue to heavily depend on others for basic essentials are bound to be affected, as the movement of goods becomes restricted due to lockdown measures.

A complete shutdown of South Africa and Botswana, for example, could have caused problems for Zimbabwe if the country had continued to heavily depend on importing essential supplies.

What all this points to is the need to continue strengthening production systems to give more focus on the revival of local industries.

Apart from contributing to the economic development agenda, it has become evident that import substitution industrialisation hedges the country against effects of pandemics like Covid-19.

This industrial development concept brings with it a radical shift from the importation drive that has characterised Zimbabwe’s economy for many years.

One of such radical shift is the deliberate effort by government to resort to domestic resource mobilisation for industrial production and funding of developmental programmes.-herald.cl.zw