Call for audacious, transformative policies

LIVINGSTONE MARUFU

The Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI), the country’s biggest business lobby group, has argued the government to develop audacious and transformative policies that will  boost local products’ competitiveness  and provide  companies  the opportunity to be major players in the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

In January 2021, African nations formally started trading under the AfCFTA. That same year, Zimbabwe ratified the AfCTA, opening the door for full national membership in the bloc.

However, two years after ratifying  the AfCFTA, Zimbabwe still doesn’t seem prepared for the competition that the continental free trade area offers, primarily because the majority of its products aren’t competitive because of their high production costs.

CZI believes  the pricing of locally produced goods will improve with new policy changes and cost-cutting measures.

“The AfCFTA race shall be won by those who are swift and bold in taking decisions that make their countries the best place to do business on the continent. These winners will provide the bulk of the products and services to be traded on the continent,”CZI president Kurai Matsheza said.

According to him, institutions and policy must consciously support and encourage start-ups, entrepreneurship, small- to medium-sized business development, and corporate entrepreneurship.

Zimbabwe’s export earnings are primarily derived from mining and agriculture, but Matsheza believe more work needs to be done on value addition to raise earnings and make the country more competitive.

“The growth in the primary sectors of mining and agriculture is commendable and provides an opportunity for shifting policy towards increased sophistication. One of the opportunities lies in industrial policy for agri-food systems.`

“Industrialising the growth in the primary sectors will deliver AfCFTA opportunities for Zimbabwe and this is going to require an aggressive entrepreneurship and competitiveness drive,” Matsheza said.

According to him, Zimbabwe can attain the Upper Middle Income Economy by 2030 with a daring policy change, but first it must make ten years’ worth of progress in the next seven years.

CZI CEO, Sekai Kuvarika, weighed in saying the continental opportunity call is a policy call as much as it is a business call and for the country to produce the goods and services to trade on the continent.

“(We should) start from the bottom up, building the competitiveness to produce enterprises, goods and services that can make it beyond our borders.

“….Zimbabwean businesses (should) become giants at the continental level. These businesses will catapult the country’s  AfCFTA agenda as they will have the expertise on the continental level.”