The curtain came down yesterday on this year’s edition of the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF) in Bulawayo amid concerns about the low turnout of both exhibitors and visitors.
There was a slight decline in the number of exhibitors to 596 from the 624 that participated last year.
This year’s trade fair, the biggest annual exhibition in Zimbabwe, began on Easter Monday and at a time the country was gripped by uncertainty after expelled Zanu PF central committee member Blessed Geza called for an indefinite stay away to force President Emmerson Mnangagwa to resign.
Although the stay away was a flop, there was scepticism from Bulawayo residents that the situation would remain peaceful.
Geza, a war veteran, has been calling on Mnangagwa to step down claiming he was no longer fit to remain in office and also accuses him of corruption and misgovernance.
The first day of the trade fair was marred by a 15-minute power cut that delayed Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga’s speech during the Zimbabwe International Business Conference.
Industry and Trade minister Mangaliso Ndlovu had invited Chiwenga to address the conference when the room suddenly went dark.
ZITF chairman Busisa Moyo later issued a statement where he blamed the blackout on an “unexpected fault on the power line into the fairgrounds”.
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The mishap at the conference seemed to have set the tone for a low key event where government departments and parastatals dominated the exhibition stands.
Most of the conferences that ran on the side-lines of the trade showcase were poorly attended.
The low turnout was also affected by the poor performance of the economy with Ndlovu acknowledging in his address at the business conference that industry was facing serious challenges that include inflation and currency instability.
Nqobile Mhlophe, a marketing officer at Global Funeral Supplies, said the holidays affected turnout during the first days of the trade fair.
“The Easter holiday could have affected many people that might have wanted to participate,” Mhlophe said.
“Some exhibitors even delayed setting their stands. They spent the whole of Sunday night here. Some even slept here.”
Nyasha Maripakwenda, Wiremit group marketing manager, shared similar sentiments when asked about his perception of the fair.
“It was our first time exhibiting this year, but I could tell business was a bit slow. I think this is because of the Easter holiday on the first day of the ZITF,” he said.
Zwane Enterprise chief executive officer Bekithemba Mbambo said business was very slow on the first day because of the holiday.
“The first day was very slow. I think next time the ZITF official should avoid putting the exhibition days during holidays,” Mbambo said.
“This makes it difficult for people to participate because they will be caught between spending time with families and participating.”
Meanwhile, calls for rapid industrialisation and beneficiation of exports dominated discussions on side events at the trade fair.
Moyo said industrialisation was the bedrock of sustainable economic growth and for Zimbabwe to be globally competitive it must shift from commodity driven exports to high value processed goods.
“Our value added exports are only under 5% of what is exported, we export maybe US$10 billion of the things out of Zimbabwe, but only a very a small percentage, 5% of that is value added exports,” he told the business conference.
“So the need for industrialisation under the guidance of our line ministry to foreground and focus on the issue of industrialisation is very appropriate, because we have this anomaly and so we are exposed to the vagaries of price changes before most primary commodities that are exported.
“This cannot remain the same. We have to have conversations about how we change that. Only then can we have sustainable employment, sustainable economic growth.”Moyo said the industrial land scape in Zimbabwe and Africa presented both opportunities and challenges.
“Africa only uses less than 2% of global manufacturing output and yet it holds 60% of the world’s unused arable land and has vast mineral resources,” he added.
“Zimbabwe’s manufacturing sector accounts for only approximately 12% of the gross domestic product, but high production costs and antiquated technologies hinder competitiveness in some sectors.
“Over 70% of the African exports are raw materials meaning billions of dollars are lost in revenue due to lack of local value addition.
“In comparison industrialised economies generate more than five times from the same raw material.
“I was in one African country that exports cocoa, but when they re-import chocolate it is five-ten times in cost.”
Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) chief executive officer Sekai Kuvarika said Zimbabwe was gravitating towards de-industrialisation as the manufacturing sector’s capacity utilisation remained stagnant.
The major reasons for capacity utilisation stagnation are the high cost of production, obsolete technology, lack of funding, policy inconsistencies, high taxes (compliance costs), electricity shortages, currency volatility, reduced export retention, and competition from the informal sector.
Kuvarika told the business conference that when CZI looked at manufacturing performance trends, in the past four to five years, they had been trading around 50% capacity utilisation with no major movement recorded.
She said for the 2023 to 2024 period the movement had been quite marginal, about 0,9% difference in capacity utilisation.
“In terms of gross domestic product contribution, the question to ask is could it be an indication of de-industrialisation or its impact growth of other sectors which have seen the decline in manufacturing contribution to GDP?
“In comparison to other sectors, manufacturing is contributing less, it is trending downwards, and the rise is in the primary sector when we are talking about value addition which means we are not translating the growth in agriculture and mining sectors into value addition, which translate into manufacturing growth,” Kuvarika said.
“There is missed opportunity on these.
“When we look at the competitive industrial performance, Zimbabwe is number eight out of 12 in Southern Africa Development Community countries, and in Africa we are number 20 out of 39 countries that were ranked and globally we are number 124 out of 143 countries that were ranked,” Kuvarika said.
“Clearly, I think that there is some element that we are trending towards de-industrialisation, and we need to revitalise our manufacturing sector and reindustrialise so that we can accelerate industrialisation.”
She said the manufacturing industry’s ability to produce and export was an area in which manufacturers were not doing well despite having capacity to do so.
Kuvarika said policies should transform the manufacturing sector to make it contribute to economic growth.
“When we look at 2024, manufacturing sector survey results, we can see there has been no movement with the in the same range of performance,” she said.
She said there had been consistent increases in imports of consumer goods and decrease in capacity utilisation meaning the loss of the domestic market share for locally manufactured goods.
“The high rate of our import dependence across the manufacturing subsectors means that our participation in the regional and global value chains is limited,” Kuvarika said.
