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Golden Sibanda : Senior Business Reporter

LOCAL companies are losing their market share to manufacturers from the region because they are using old technology, which makes them uncompetitive, a South African firm’s packaging solutions engineer has said. This is despite the fact that the country has some of the most educated workforce and abundant technical skills to operate modern technology machines, which are more efficient and enhance competitiveness of firms.Cape Town-based Filmatic Packaging Systems’ sales engineer Riaan van Zyl said this at the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries manufacturers conference at the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair in Bulawayo last week.

Filmatic Packaging Systems offers equipment and services for specialised liquid packaging solutions, as individual equipment or complete turnkey projects.

The aim of this year’s ZITF event was to bring focus back on industry to seek solutions to revive the country’s ailing manufacturing industry, as such, the trade fair ran under the theme “innovate, integrate, industrialise”.

He said that on his most recent visit to Zimbabwe he visited many companies and noted that in many firms too many operators are used to run machinery for jobs which a single machine can perform in lesser time.

“Because I visit a lot of factories all over the world, but recently in Zimbabwe I have seen factories where seventeen operators produce products in a day which our entry level filling machine can do in an hour.

“Now, if you think about it in terms of competitiveness, you cannot be competitive, that is why South African companies and Zambian companies come into Zimbabwe and take the market. But really it is not necessary,” Mr van Zyl said.

Mr van Zyl added: “The skills level I have found in Zimbabwe is very high, especially the technical skills levels and so there is no need for other countries to come and take the business away from Zimbabwean people.”

Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa, in his 2016 National Budget, projected that the country’s exports would be $3,4 billion, against imports of $6,3 billion, giving a trade deficit of $2,9 billion.

Most Zimbabwean companies are finding it difficult to compete against lower priced imported products, even after the import duty.

Due to the listless constraints to business in a largely illiquid economy that uses a basket of currencies after scrapping its inflation maligned currency, industrial capacity has struggled to edge up and averages 34 percent.

The situation has created cyclical problems in that low capacity in the manufacturing industry has resulted in sustained pressure on the import bill, draining the little liquidity trickling in through low exports, Diaspora remittances, lines of credit and foreign investment.

It is against this background that Deputy Minister of Industry Chiratidzi Mabuwa challenged South African firms, Zimbabwe’s biggest trading partner, to set up factories in the country.