Editorial Comment: Internal buying critical for mining sector Minister Chidhakwa

Yesterday’s edition of Herald Business carried an article in which Mines and Mining Development Minister Walter Chidhakwa presented a brain teaser to our local manufacturing companies, on how mining firms can revive industry.

What quickly sprang to mind was the often unheeded call that solutions to Zimbabwe’s economic problems should come from within.

Unbeknown to many, there is no single prescription of how a country can wriggle out of an economic quagmire, but there is need to summon our collective creative genius and resources available to us no matter how painful.

To that end, Minister Chidhakwa asked an almost rhetorical question for industry to start imagining the positive transformation local procurement by mining firms could bring to the industry and the domestic economy in general.

He pointed out that, for instance, by leveraging the purchasing capacity of local mining firms, which runs into millions of dollars annually, the mining companies could encourage local manufacturers to acquire franchises of reputable global firms to make their equipment and other items locally.

The Mines minister said that Zimbabwe possessed the skills, intellectual and technical capacity to produce most of the equipment and consumables mining firms require for their operations, but are limited by funding.

He opined that there could be a great deal of positive impact to the manufacturing industry’s capacity utilisation as well as its viability if for instance, mining companies procured all their cyanide, roof bolts or mill balls locally. The list of items these mining companies buy externally is limitless.

Benefits of local procurement would be felt by everyone from the ordinary man selling his wares on the streets, to households of gainfully employed men and women, manufacturing industry and right up to central Government.

The approach would certainly be impactful, considering the gold mining industry for example spent $621 million in 2012 and 2015 while the platinum miners spent $510 million on foreign procurement over the same three year period.

As suggested by Minister Chidhakwa, the purchasing capacity of the entire mining industry would help revive local industry, create thousands of new jobs and go a long way in reducing the outflow of the much needed hard currency.

Minister Chidhakwa, in advocating stronger synergy between the miners and the manufacturing industry, operating at an average capacity of 34 percent, is suggesting exactly what Government is seeking to achieve by restricting importation of products, which local industry has the capacity to produce.

He has already proposed to lead the way for mining companies to start the conversations with the manufacturing industry on what the mines require in terms of the quality and quantity of equipment and consumables that they use.

It is our fervent hope that the manufacturers see the opportunity presented by the huge potential for mutually beneficial synergies with mines rather than the daunting task that needs to be done in order to make this a reality.

The thinking of Minister Chidhakwa reflects the kind of paradigm shift that every patriotic Zimbabwean needs to adopt sooner than later for us, together and as a country, to find the solutions to problems bedevilling our country.

We all know how difficult it has been just to prepare the stage for resumption of funding assistance from global multilateral lenders, whose handlers are the “big boys” of the western world, which slapped us with sanctions.

And so it would be folly to think or expect that we are going to get help from outside, as far as resolving problems facing industry and the economy is concerned. We need to be bold and take the bull by its horns.

Given the complexity of our problems, the road to recovery will certainly be littered with hurdles, but the only way we know is forward, to grow the economy and drive other areas that feed from it such as dwindling inflows to Treasury.

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