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Obert Chifamba Eastern Edition
MANICALAND Province should not wait for outsiders to create industrial projects that make use of natural resources they produce, Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) president, Mr Sifelani Jabangwe has said.

Mr Jabangwe said this during a round-table business briefing here yesterday. Manicaland Chamber of Industries, National Council Executive members, college students, CZI secretariat and representatives of various business sectors across the province attended the briefing.

“Let’s be proactive as a province and not wait for someone to come and initiative developmental programmes for us. Yes, many people in Manicaland feel they did not benefit from diamonds at all but the plain reality here is you did not do anything as a province to start something to process the mineral into high value products that could have had various economic ripples in the entire Manicaland Province.

“If it was an issue of resource constraints maybe you could have just established a centre for value addition then invite partners to work with and you would have emerged the biggest beneficiaries and not losers as you now feel,” he said. Mr Jabangwe revealed that industrial capacity utilization was currently 33 percent for Manicaland yet the province was not doing much to contain such problems as the rampant smuggling of goods from neighbouring Mozambique into its corridors and ultimately the entire country, which was suffocating the local manufacturing industry.

“The porous borders and illegal settlers in the province’s timber plantations, for example, are stifling efforts to revive the province’s industry as smuggled goods are flooding the markets and pushing out locally manufactured ones. Manicaland has the timber industry, motor industry and more importantly, a potential-laden tourism industry that can easily be used to kick-start the revival of economy.

“Manicaland’s business community should come together and see how they can change their capacity utilization for the better through engaging the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe for funding,” added Mr Jabangwe.

He further stressed that CZI would help local companies involved in big projects but was quick to say that the companies needed to present their concerns to Government as a way of influencing policy formulation while taking part in Government programmes that are introduced to help breathe life into the entire economy.

Mr Jabangwe lauded Government for adopting the local content policy that requires industry to consider local products first ahead of imports to promote both production and processing sectors. In that vein of thought, Mr Jabangwe also commended Manicaland province for deciding that they would not be declared a Special Economic Zone for diamonds only but for other economic activities such as timber production and timber processing.

CZI started a few years ago to advocate for local content regulations, as a way of promoting local industry and to date, the concept has generated a lot of interest and has been widely accepted by Government.