The Sunday Mail
Bulawayo will be hosting the inaugural CBZ International SME Indaba this week and Minister of Small to Medium Enterprises and Co-operative Development Sithembiso Nyoni is expected to be the guest of honour. Our reporter Grace Kaerasora last week spoke to Minister Nyoni on the event and other issues related to SMEs.
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Q: Bulawayo will this week host an International SME’s Indaba where your ministry is actively participating, can you tell us more about the event and its benefits?
A: The benefits are that we are going to have different business people. We are going to have SMEs from around the country and outside the country to share their experiences, to share their successes and also to showcase CBZ as our bank that has really facilitated SMEs.
As you know they launched US$10 million for SMEs and that has been very useful for SMEs. So it is a very important indaba in that it is following up what the bank put to the public. This is going to encourage people to say ‘Ok if I am given a facility I must use it and I must take the products that I borrowed the money for to show the others so that it encourages them also to do the same.’
Q: Concerns have been raised that such fora have tended to attract technocrats at the expense of real SMEs, what is your take on this assertion?
A: No, the ministry does not choose people who come to the forum. We have organised the SMEs into chambers and into associations and then we advertise for people to come. It is free for all.
So we would like those that are willing to come, but are unable to come to express that. If there are people who are able to come, we can facilitate their coming. But in a lot of cases we work through the SMEs themselves.
So it is them who choose who to come and if they choose technocrats, well that would be too bad, but there will also be exhibitions so you cannot choose a technocrat to exhibit because a technocrat usually is not necessarily a business person. We will be having SMEs bring their wares to come and exhibit.
We will be having SMEs from India and other countries like South Africa. So that really means it is the practitioners, those people that are in business will come with their products.
Q: The biggest challenges that SMEs face is failure to access finance to boost or expand their ventures, what financial instruments has the government put in place to support SMEs?
A: In two weeks’ time, we are going to be launching all the facilities that the Reserve Bank has put in place together including some banks having a separate SME facility. The facilities are there, but people do not know about them, so we are going to educate them on that.
The Reserve Bank has had inclusive financing and has asked all the banks to have an SME window and most of the banks have got an SME window, but SMEs do not know about this.
We want to bring this to the public so that SMEs know that there is CBZ, there is POSB, Barclays Bank that have special facilities for them.
That is why CBZ has organised this indaba for the public to know that there is this facility and if you access it, this is what you could achieve.
Q: SMEs in Zimbabwe have been affected by cheap imports. Apart from measures like Statutory Instrument 64, what is the Ministry doing to ensure SMEs enjoy benefits of the local markets ahead of foreign goods?
A: This indaba is one way of promoting local markets. When we have a trade fair we promote local goods there for people to come and see. Once a year we have a national expo for SMEs and we also have provincial expos, all these are ways to try and publicise to the public market the goods that person is producing, but sometimes SMEs do not participate as actively. What we want to say is once those are advertised people should participate because that is a good way of showing what you are producing so that people can know where to buy and where to get products. We usually have this expo in October.
Q: What is being done to encourage the development of SMEs?
A: We are doing a lot, for instance we are working with Zimra that is now educating the SMEs so that they do not become afraid of formalising and also of being connected to the fiscus. We are training SMEs.
Last year we trained more than 27 000 SMEs in different areas such as how do you start your business, how do you grow your business, management, financial literacy and linking, marketing this kind of thing.
We are also facilitating their growth through linkages. We have linked quite a lot. I was in Mashonaland Central Province, they have linked over 400 SMEs to different big companies like those that are making honey pharmaceuticals, they are linked to chemists and those that are growing different horticultural products they are linked to the hotels and so forth. So we are out there to facilitate the growth of SMEs in every way possible.
Q: Then on the issue of vending, what do you think is the permanent solution to the vending situation in the country?
A: The permanent solution really is when the economy improves and people can move from the street into jobs. The second one is if we make permanent and dignified workspace for SMEs, but more importantly it is to dialogue with them because in the street there are serious business people that are really making a statement to say we want to do business, but we are not being noticed.
Let us dialogue with them rather than chase them away, let us talk to them and find out what they want to do and where they want to go.
We have already started as a ministry, we have a team that is talking to vendors trying to understand why they are vending and if given an option, what would they do. So far we have a lot of people that have registered to say ‘if I have a work space and machines I am an expert in dress making, but I stopped because I had nowhere to work and I stopped because electricity was too expensive.’
There are others that are in the street and they are very good in carpentry or hairdressing and have stopped because there were these challenges. When we have found out who are those in the street that really would have opted for something else, we will then facilitate that.
My team is there dialoguing and also I would like to say if you know of anybody who is a vendor that has a specific skill, a specific business ambition or idea that they wanted to do but they could not do it because of other constraints, the Ministry is ready to engage them and see how we can facilitate them to do something else other than vending.
The problem of vending is multi-faceted, we need the Ministry of Health to say how do you operate a business in the street, what are the health regulations needed to abide by. We need local authorities to say where in the street do you operate and how do you operate. We need the ministry of SMEs also to bring the business ethics to those that are operating in the street, but I think what is happening now, the dialogue, is important.
As Government we have a responsibility to respond to our citizens accordingly so unless we have got alternatives and we are talking to the people we should not treat them with hard clubs.
