Govt crippled companies: Robertson

From 2007 to 2008, the country was in economic meltdown. The Goodwills Masimirembwa-led National Income and Pricing Commission forced companies to reduce their prices and even went further to arrest some of the top ranking company officials.

Seasoned economist, John Robertson, told delegates at the Labour Briefing 2013 organised by the Institute of People Management of Zimbabwe that the government made the mistake of controlling prices and pegging them to unsustainable levels without factoring in production costs.

“Zimbabwe has become a net exporter, a nation of supermarkets because of the US Dollar we are using. But the government brought us to this situation when they forced companies to charge low prices on goods produced at higher costs that greatly affected companies’ capacity to re-tool and stay afloat.

“We now have a lot of work as a country in trying to attract investors, re-tooling those industries and even training people we have lost a lot of skilled people,” said Robertson.

He added that local companies were operating in the most difficult environment where they had to recapitalise with very little money. Robertson said it would remain difficult for locally produced goods to have a competitive advantage over imports because of the difference in technology being used.

According to Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai most companies in Zimbabwe are still using equipment bought during the time of the liberation struggle. The struggling companies have to also contend with unsustainably high utility bills chiefly from Zesa and City councils.

Zimbabwe’s import bill is in the region of $6 billion against exports of $2.9 billion and this prompted the establishing of a Buy Zimbabwe Campaign by Munyaradzi Hwengwere. The government embraced the initiative in its National Trade Policy 2012-2016 launched earlier in the year by President Robert Mugabe.