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Dr Gift Mugano

We all love our country. We are all patriots. We wish to travel with our national airline as proud Zimbabweans like citizens of other countries who take pride in using their national airlines. We wish to buy Zimbabwean products so that we create jobs. We all wish to be in our country with our families all the time and cherish speaking our vernacular languages. The list is endless. But the reality of the matter is that our wishes have remained wishes.It is public knowledge that our national airline has a number of challenges. We have observed, for example, that in some cases people have been left stranded when the airline failed to make it on time.

In some cases, it is delayed and when you are an international traveller, you are bound to miss the next flight. Such inconveniences are costly. I had a classic incidence sometime in 2010 when I went to Geneva, Switzerland. I travelled to Geneva for the World Trade Organisation Senior officials of trade meeting.

I met one of our ministers at the airport in Geneva who had come to attend a meeting at one of the United Nations Organisations. He was stranded. He had been there for more than five good hours. He had been patriotic to board our national airline.

He was delayed and missed a number of connecting flights and arrived at the Geneva international airport when our embassy officials had left. Obviously, they assumed that the minister was no longer coming.

On a refreshing note, as a cultured person, I moved towards my honourable minister, who looked very tired and confused and respectfully greeted him in Shona. He actually knew me by my first name. For the first time in my life, I was given a hug by the honourable minister.

It was very long indeed. I am sure you all agree with me that it is not easy to see a Zimbabwean minister later on a hug. But in Geneva I got it courtesy of Air Zimbabwe.

He told me in no uncertain terms that he would use South African Airways next time!

Why was the honourable minister saying that he would try next door? He was very patriotic to promote a Zimbabwean product. His money is no longer patriotic. We don’t buy names but we buy service and we obviously need value for money. The moment we don’t get value for money, we try next door.

Our national airline is our national pride. The new board should address the issues of reliability, infrastructure of the airlines and of course expand its routes. It must capitalise on its world record on security but certainly issues regarding customer related matters cannot be underestimated.

With respect to infrastructure, we want to enjoy the comfort we enjoy with other regional airlines like Kenya airways. These airlines provide state of art couches which is by far more modern than our local airline. I come from Chimanimani.

Honourable Samuel Undenge knows that during our times when we were coming to Harare, we would board Kukura Kurerwa buses or BnC at midnight and arrives in Harare at 6pm. We would sit on hard seats; very uncomfortable.

We obviously don’t want to see the same situation in our national airlines nor be reminded our past experience from Chimanimani.

Buy Zimbabwe is championing Buy Zimbabwe products. It is the norm with every country. We must buy Zimbabwe products to create jobs. There is no debate about that. However, the reality of the matter is that our goods are very expensive. Our pockets at the same time are not as deep as they should be.

Hence, because of this circumstance, people are forced to go for what their money can buy not what they wish. One classic example is kotamai boutique (flea market). No one takes pride to go and buy at flea market. People want to enjoy shopping. You cannot enjoy shopping at kotamai boutique. However, it is an open secret that even executives buys from the same market.

When the Governor of Reserve Bank  of Zimbabwe, Dr Mangudya took office he said that we must go back to the basics. He identified low productivity or rather lack of competitiveness as Zimbabwe’s number one enemy. He was very right! He didn’t not only stop there. He called for the devaluation of the US dollar. Unfortunately, very few understood what he was talking about.

He was in short calling for productivity. This country is producing below its capacity which result in high prices — higher than our regional and international counterparts before we bring in other factors like exchange rate fluctuations.

The question is how do we increase productivity?

Our first priority should be agricultural sector. It is an open secret that about 70 percent of raw materials used in the manufacturing sector comes from agricultural sector. What is required here is to work very hard in raising productivity in this sector. In brief, we need to work on:

Providing at least 10 percent of our National Budget to the agricultural sector in line with the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme and implementation of the CAADP framework;

Provision of incentives to companies to undertake contract farming — replicate the tobacco strategy to other crops;

Promulgating of a legal framework which requires companies to buy locally or promote business linkages — this move stop the madness of agricultural products being dumped in Mbare Musika from Kwazulu Natal and Polokwane!

Operationalisation of the commodity exchange — this will address the issues of post-harvest losses (through provision of markets) and collateral through the issuance of warehouse receipts;

Incentivising joint ventures and public private partners in agricultural sector;

Targeting input support through Agricultural Rural Development Authority and other farmers who have enough water with serious stringent rules;

Kick out unproductive farmers from the farms and replace them with serious farmers

This is not exhaustive but I am very confident that if we implement these measures we can restore food security.

With respect to manufacturing sector, if we sort out the rot in the agricultural sector we would have provided half solution to the manufacturing sector.

The moment the agricultural sector begin to breathe certainly the manufacturing sector will tick because there will be demand for the manufactured goods. Imagine how the chemical industries, implements manufacturers and other agro related industries will respond when the agricultural sector rebound.

Above all the manufacturing sector is in dire need of fresh capital for retooling. The sector failed to take advantage of the depreciated Rand due to lack of finance. The opportunity is still there! The million dollar question is how do we attract fresh capital?

One way is through attracting foreign direct investments. Here we will be hamstring by the indigenisation law. President Mugabe clarified the law in recent weeks but this must be put into law.

This requires the Ministry responsible for indigenisation to amend accordingly. If we are going to attract FDIs into this economy, the indigenisation law must never be explained to anyone but one must just buy the Statutory Instrument or access the act on the Government website and comprehend it.

With regards to the mining sector, this is one of the critical sectors which brings in significant foreign exchange. This sector is suffering from multiple taxes together with high electricity tariffs at a time where commodity prices are subdued. Actually, there are no signs that the commodities prices will recover soon. We need to address the multiplicity of taxes and electricity pricing if we are to save this sector.

Going forward, we need to lure new investors into this sector mainly focused on value addition and beneficiation if we are going to arrest commodity prices vulnerability. For the existing mining entities, indigenisation credits must be given to firms which are investing in value addition.

From sectoral approach, I am confident that if we work very hard in addressing productivity challenges in agricultural sector, manufacturing and mining together with dealing with the microeconomics of competitiveness like cost drivers, we will be able to withstand the forces of the appreciating US dollar and the downside risk of Chinese new growth model.

Having said this, we would not have done justice to ourselves if we don’t address the political landscape. Since the last election in 2013 we have never rested on political discourse. We have literally wasted the lion share of our five year productive period in politics, which is not good. To be quite frank, this situation has created anxiety and a wait and see attitude both locally and externally.

I talked about the need to lure investors in order to revive the industry. There is no investor who will come to a country where there are negative perceptions we have actually created.

We need to have national dialogue where were can have a point of convergence and that dialogue should come up with clear recommendations which are aimed to address these issues in the same format as the Rapid Results Approach.

Dr Mugano is an Economic Advisor, Author and Expert in Trade and Competitiveness. He is a Research Associate of Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. Feedback: +263 772 541 209 or [email protected]