Chinese, EU jobs are more important than Zim ones

29 Jun, 2014 - 06:06 0 Views

The Sunday Mail

Zimbabweans are a proud lot whose delicate skins must be draped in the finest silk of second-hand imports from all over the world.

Radar Holdings, Tombs Engineering, Eastern Districts, NT Engineering, Karina Textiles, PG Safety Glass, Quest Motors, Mutare Board and Paper Mills, Dunlop, Cairns Foods, Border Timbers, Manicaland Cotton Company of Zimbabwe, etc, and Wattle Company.
Older Zimbabweans must feel a sense of nostalgia as they look at some of the names, the who’s who of yesteryear.

I deliberately gathered this catalogue of names from The Manica Post newspaper on Friday. These companies, all at various stages of decay or already dead and buried, constitute what used to be Manicaland Province’s industrial hub, the Nyakamete industrial area in Mutare. It is now almost a cemetery.

And those names, by the way, can be found in all major industrial settings of major cities in Zimbabwe either in a similar state, comatose or at various stages of decomposition, a fitting tribute to our dalliance with Esap in the 1990s.

The former factories have now been occupied by small traders, non-governmental organisations and second-hand flea market dealers. Some have been converted into warehouses to temporarily store imported finished goods before they are unleashed on to open market place.

And the whole point of this instalment is that we are witnessing and nursing a calamity in which Government, by omission or commission, is complicit.

To start with, Government must admit that Esap was a bad policy decision, especially so for a poor Third World economy with limited manufacturing capacity, using antiquated machinery and with a population obsessed with foreign products.

Soon companies like Cone Textiles, Kadoma Mills, Chegutu Spinners and Weavers found themselves in death throes. This trend simply has to be reversed if Government is serious about Zim-Asset.

Today we lament the death of the entire cotton industry.
Gokwe, once the epicentre of the country’s cotton producing regions, is in agony.
A kilogramme of cotton gives the poor rural farmer a measly US$0,35 for the season’s labour. This is against about US$4,50 for the same weight of tobacco.

But Government will not intervene to stop the havoc. We are a free market economy.
Latest media reports show that Zimbabwe imports US$300 million worth of textiles every year, both raw and finished. Huge figures are also spent by smugglers, meaning the country doesn’t benefit by way of duty.

We have a new Minister of Industry and Commerce, the proverbial new broom which should clean better. No, he says he cannot protect inefficient industries which produce shoddy goods.

Zimbabweans are a proud lot whose delicate skins must be draped in the finest silk of second-hand imports from all over the world. No money should be spared to satisfy this national emergency.

Really? Alternatively, the minister of the same collapsed or collapsing industry and commerce says Zimbabwe is signatory to protocols and conventions on trade which must be respected.

These WTO protocols dictate that we cannot erect tariff barriers to imports even when they are detrimental to our industry. That means we must let our own industries and factories shut down while we keep European and Chinese textile mills running.

They need to create jobs more than we do.
In fact we are happy with more of our school-leavers on the street selling airtime or sniffing glue. We are happy to train doctors and engineers for the export market while we engage expensive expatriates.

I thought the minister would be happy to restore industrial viability by lobbying his colleagues to ban unnecessary imports, or at least limiting them to essentials like critical medicines, spares and raw materials to revive industry in line with Zim-Asset!

A cursory scan of the globe will show that most of the world’s developed countries employed protectionist measures to be able to grow. Most European nations use subsidies as a form of protection.

In fact, University of Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang, in his book, Bad Samaritans, exposes the hypocrisy and insincerity of International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Trade Organisation prescriptions against protectionism because nearly all developed nations have used it at one stage or other to get to where they are today.

He likens the prescription to a man who uses a ladder to get to the top of a building.
Once there, the fellow kicks away the ladder so that others cannot use it to get to where he is. And protectionism is the ladder we need at this stage.

We are not yet able to compete and we still need to develop and sharpen our skills. That means we have to be inward looking and consume what we produce, no matter how inferior in quality.

This economy must create jobs, and we must save all the foreign currency we can get.
Now Government’s sins of commission, and they still relate to our appetite for all things foreign, good or bad.

We have motor vehicle assemblers such as Quest Motors, Willowvale Mazda Motor Industries and AVM Africa.
Our Government will not touch their products, even with a long stick. The Ford Ranger, Discovery and Lexus SUV have become standard for civil servants. And now MPs want them too. The Mercedes-Benz is old skool. All these models are imported fully assembled.

We export foreign currency and get the vehicle.
Manicaland Provincial Affairs Minister Chris Mushohwe toured Quest Motors in Mutare last week where he complained that Government and the corporate sector were failing to support local vehicle assemblers.

He said it was futile to talk about Zim-Asset delivering jobs when Government preferred to import finished products. It was the duty of Government and the corporate sector to make Zim-Asset work, he said.

“Why should we buy imported vehicles when Willowvale Mazda Motor Industries and Quest Motors are folding yet they produce vehicles equally good?” he asked.

“We need to demonstrate as Government that we believe in our local industry and this is an appeal I shall take up seriously as we implement Zim Asset.”

He needs to talk to Minister Francis Nhema.
Quest Motors director Tarik Adam quickly reminded the minister of a long-forgotten 2002 Presidential Order decreeing: “All vehicles purchased by Government and other public institutions, including parastatals, shall be procured from local vehicle assembly plants.”

We can only hope that Minister Mushohwe will look for that Presidential Order and take it to the Minister of Industry and Commerce.
Mr Adam said they were now also assembling Foton, Chery and JMC vehicle models, which he said were competitively priced for the local market.

Government must play ball. Creating 2,2 million jobs by 2018 in this era of technology and general automation by companies calls for tough and less than popular decisions.

And rescue packages don’t come cheap when you don’t have your own national currency.
At least America could splurge US$700 billion in 2008 to buy up so-called toxic assets to prevent a complete economic meltdown.

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