The Sunday Mail
Livingstone Marufu
Cheap imports pose health risks to consumers as some products do not meet minimum standard requirements, it has emerged. The domestic market had become a dumping ground for substandard goods, with the Standards Association of Zimbabwe and industry saying soap manufacturing ingredients and unhealthy oils were detected in certain imported foodstuffs.
It has also been discovered that some foreign producers are deceiving consumers by packing less than the stated product weight. Among imports recently tracked and tested through the SAZ’s conformity-based assessment system are cooking oil, beans, toothpaste and tomato sauce.
SAZ director Dr Eve Gadzikwa told The Sunday Mail, “We are very concerned with imports that are failing to meet our minimum standards. It’s our expectation that goods that are not removed from the general import licence will meet these standards as this will protect local industry and our health.
“We have detected some imports that don’t meet expected minimum standards and may be harmful to our society. This may be due to unscrupulous dealers who continue to smuggle goods into the country without declaring them at borders posts. “Nevertheless, we commend Government efforts to plug all the holes that were letting smuggled goods in and hope individuals doing this will be brought to book.”
Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries vice-president Mr Sifelani Jabangwe added: “Before Statutory Instrument 64 of 2016, some products that were competing with local goods were of poor quality that consumers cannot measure or determine at the point of purchase.
“Unscrupulous manufacturers from South Africa can play around with ingredients to make their products cheaper. And such manufacturers usually do this when producing for export markets where they believe their conduct will not be detected easily.
“They also do this where they will not face penalties if their poor quality products are detected. Thus some of the cheaper imports are poor in quality, but due to the fact that the local consumer is unable to determine the quality, they may pick them over goods produced locally.
“These (goods) lead to low demand for local industry, leading to company closures, retrenchments, lower tax revenues for Government and trade deficits that may lead to liquidity challenges.”
Mr Jabangwe went on: “What the consumer may not be aware of is that some of the oil products were found with soap ingredients thus (were) unhealthy. Some oils were very volatile thus lasting shorter periods when used for cooking.
“In a period where you could use only one local bottle of oil, you could end up using two bottles, making it more expensive in the long run to use imported cooking oil. Some of the cooking oil was labelled as soya bean oil when it was actually the unhealthy palm oil which was blended to make the product cheaper.
“A local can of baked beans is packed to brim with beans with very little soup, whereas imported baked beans could have 60 percent beans and 40 percent soup. To the consumer, the two cans look the same and when one looks at the price, the one with more soup will be cheaper and thus gets selected.”
Zimbabwe opened its borders to foreign basic commodities during the hyperinflationary era of 2007/8 after much of its industrial capacity was depleted by illegal Western sanctions.
Though multiple currencies were introduced in 2009 to improve the economic situation, imports continued to flood the market. This meant industrial capacity remained subdued and the country became a source of United States dollars for foreign producers. In June 2016, Government introduced import controls on selected items to stimulate domestic production and curb currency flight.
