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Oliver Kazunga Senior Business Reporter

THE Zimbabwe Clothing Manufacturers Association (ZCMA) says cotton farmers need to be assisted to produce good quality cotton in the manufacture of market-oriented products across the value chain.

Cotton production has over the last few years been on an upward trajectory following interventions by the Government to assist.

Last year, the country’s biggest cotton-buying firm, The Cotton Company of Zimbabwe (Cottco) registered a 40,6 percent growth in cotton intake to 116 052 tonnes compared to 82 479 tonnes in 2020.

The country requires at least 300 000 tonnes of cotton annually.

ZCMA chairman Jeremy Youmans said while the cotton yield was still low, farmers in the sector needed to be supported through timeous distribution and inputs provision to lure more farmers back into white gold production and improved quality.

“We used to have very high quality cotton which commanded a six percent premium on the international market, but that is gone and we have lost that quality.

“Our quality is very poor by international standards and for what the clothing industry needs for any textile industry for them to produce quality products.

“The yields are also low and we have to deal with both of those aspects, we have got to support the farmer and come up with a mechanism for them to make it a valuable crop they want to grow,” said Mr Youmans who is also the executive director for a leading clothing manufacturer, Paramount Textiles.

At the moment, he said Zimbabwe focused on value-addition but paying little attention to the quality that farmers should produce.

“We must make it market-oriented and make sure that we are producing what the end user requires and not just saying farmers must grow cotton and whatever they produce we must use and then if you don’t want to use it, then we will export it. That’s not a model of industrialisation,” he said.

He said this in turn was compromising the quality of the final garment coming out of cotton.

“And too much of this country’s policies and ways of thinking are focused around value addition; to say now we have a raw material here being cotton, let’s just value add it.

“They are not necessarily value-adding it in the way that the next stage or the next customer actually wants and therefore, as a clothing manufacturer, I can only make garments out of a certain quality of the fabric I get. The fabric manufacturer also can only make a certain fabric because of the quality of the cotton he got,” said Mr Youmans.

“We must make it market-oriented and make sure that we are producing what the end user requires and not just saying farmers must grow cotton and whatever they produce we must use and then if you don’t want to use it, then we will export it. That’s not a model for industrialisation.”

Mr Youmans said there were many reasons why cotton farmers could not raise output to competitive levels. Among the drawbacks, he said, is the low return growers were receiving and this was making it difficult for them to get back into the fields the next season.

“And there are a lot of good reasons why they are unable to grow it, it’s up to them, but farmers because they didn’t get full inputs or they didn’t get seed at the right time or they didn’t get the right support, so that is one area we need to look at,” he said.

Seed cotton output went down to 28 000 tonnes in 2015, which was the lowest production figure ever recorded in Zimbabwe.

During its peak period, the country would produce an average of 250 000 tonnes of seed cotton per season.

Not getting good enough quality and quantity cotton, the ZCMA chairman said this has some adverse repercussions on the country at large in terms of value-addition and supporting other related industries.

At its peak, the local clothing industry employed 35 000 people directly, but the figure has plummeted to about 6 000.

Employment figures in the clothing industry have drastically gone down due to a host of challenges the sector was reeling under, among them stiff competition from the influx of imported second hand clothing, low output by the farmers and depressed capacity utilisation in the manufacturing sector.