60 percent machinery in firms over 15 years old

Source: 60 percent machinery in firms over 15 years old – Sunday News Mar 12, 2017

Dickson Mangena, Business Reporter
ABOUT 60 percent of machinery in local companies is obsolete making it hard for the firms to be competitive in the quality of goods as compared to other trading partners in the region, an official has said,

Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries president Mr Busisa Moyo said local industry was faced with the challenge of technology gap to function.

“One of the challenges that we are facing as manufacturers is the challenge of technology. In our last survey for 2016 we found out that over 60 percent of equipment in the manufacturing sector is above 15 to 20 years,” said Mr Moyo while addressing economics students from seven schools at Petra High school on Friday.

He said the the issue of outdated equipment was affecting the quality and quantity of products that the industry was producing.

“With the old machinery you don’t become as competitive in terms of quality. It is not like in Zimbabwe we cannot produce quality goods but sometimes we are betrayed by the equipment in our industries,” said Mr Moyo.

He also said according to the survey, companies were spending most of their revenue in retooling and the move was gaining traction.

“Most of the foreign direct investment is going to retooling and expansion and we can say that equipment is increasing,” said Mr Moyo.

Mr Moyo also said that industry was benefiting from Government protectionist policies as companies need to gain competition in the region.

“We are benefiting from Government protection through a number of statutory instruments and we hope that by the time they expire we will be at a stage where we can be competitive,” said Mr Moyo.

Meanwhile, the organiser of the event Mr Jenias Sibanda, a teacher at Petra High School said he was pleased with the commitment of the invited guests to engage students, who also included the deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, Dr Kupukile Mlambo.

“The seminar was a success and our main aim was to get children to interact and find out from the highest offices where the country was going instead of rumours. From the information they got we hope that they will become ambassadors of some of the policies that the central bank and business are working on,” said Mr Sibanda