Industry and International Trade Minister Obert Mpofu told the state-radio his ministry was compiling a list of such companies.
He charged that some managers were reportedly sending workers on forced unpaid leave and telling them that if they voted for the MDC candidate Morgan Tsvangirai again they would get their jobs back, but would be fired if they voted for Robert Mugabe in the June 27 poll.
“We have received a lot of reports,” Mpofu said. “We are taking stock and compiling the names. When we come back into power we will not hesitate to help workers to buy those companies under our indigenization and economic empowerment act.”
The business community counters that companies are cutting back production because they cannot obtain enough foreign currency to operate. The tourism industry has said it has had to lay off staff because tourism here has come to a virtual halt as a result of political violence which has led to some 50 deaths and the displacement of more than 6,000 families since March 29.
The critical shortage of foreign currency has led to erratic fuel supplies, leading to long queues at petrol stations, while the continuing occupation of white-owned commercial farms by Zanu (PF) supporters led by independence war veterans has disrupted agricultural exports, along with low tobacco prices.
Mpofu insisted however that the timing of the “rampant” closures could not be just a coincidence.
Economic commentator John Mheza said: “There might be one or two companies where workers have been told political things, but the truth is that businesses, like the government itself, have no foreign exchange to buy raw materials. Borrowing offshore is not possible now because of the country’s credit worthlessness.”
Economists said the general state of the economy was so bad that any manager with business acumen would close or scale down operations.
 “There is nothing political about it,” he said. “Companies are having difficulties in raising forex to finance operations. The only way is to close.”
The Zimbabwe Chamber of Mines made an urgent appeal to the government this week to allow gold producers to open foreign currency accounts to enable them to import essential production components. Gold producers are not permitted to hold receipts in foreign currency accounts because they are not direct exporters.
Instead they are obliged to sell their gold to the Reserve Bank, and are paid in local currency at the official exchange rate, recently deregulated to converge with the parallel market rate. Industrialists said costs were escalating steadily because of the combined forces of hyper-inflation, currently running at over 1 million percent and the rising price of foreign exchange on the parallel market.
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Post published in: News