SMEs should tap into COMESA: Nyoni

SMALL-to-medium enterprises should take advantage of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) to market their products and services, Small to Medium Enterprises and Cooperative Development Minister Sithembiso Nyoni has said.

COMESA is Africa’s largest regional economic block with a combined gross domestic product of $447 billion and an estimated population of 500 million people.

Delivering a speech at the Institute of Bankers of Zimbabwe conference in Nyanga, Minister Nyoni said the COMESA market was a low hanging fruit that the sector could take advantage of, before reaching the bigger global markets.

She singled out agricultural products as some of the products that SMEs could easily take advantage of to penetrate the regional trading bloc, before looking at bigger markets like Europe.

“There is a huge market in COMESA, which has a population of half a billion. Zimbabwe can actually feed the whole of COMESA if we take agriculture seriously, for instance.

“If we take a look at the amount of underutilised land we have, we can feed the entire continent,” she said. COMESA is a free trade area with twenty member states stretching across Africa, from Libya to Swaziland. Formed in December 1994, COMESA replaced the Preferential Trade Area, which had existed since 1981.

She, however, emphasised the need for big corporate and financial institutions to assist the booming sector create market linkages.

This, she said, was one of the ways to ensure the sector grows, a development that will cascade to other sectors of the economy, given the contribution the SME sector is making towards the economy.

Statistics show the sector now employs about 5,7 million people in Zimbabwe and contributes an estimated 60 percent of the country’s GDP. — BH24 GOVERNMENT will no longer issue import permits for horticultural products as a measure to promote the growth of the sector and save the much needed foreign currency, a Cabinet minister has said.

Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development Minister Joseph Made said President Mugabe had directed him to ensure that rice production was also promoted across the country.

He said Government was also working on the producer price for a tonne of the cereal.

“His Excellency has directed me and the Minister of Industry and Commerce to quickly stop the importation of horticultural products as they waste much needed foreign currency,” he said.

“This means that the importation of fruit and vegetables will be stopped immediately. We are finalising on the exact list of foreign produced fruits that are occupying shelves in shops.”

Minister Made said beneficiaries of Zimbabwe’s land reform programmes should take advantage of Government policies. “This must be a positive development for our farmers, we now want them to improve on their production capacity and also to produce quality produce,” he said.

“The foreign currency being wasted on the importation of carrots and grapes will now be utilised towards the purchase of more fertilisers and pesticides.”

On the producer price for rice, Minister Made said the move would reduce the crop’s importation.

“We have the water, land and climatic conditions, which suit the production of certain varieties of rice,” he said. “We want to cut the importation of rice. Rice has become a very important source of starch, but is consuming a lot of foreign currency. Dams such as Tokwe-Mukosi must also irrigate rice plantations and this must spread across the country.”

Dr Made challenged the Grain Marketing Board and the Cotton Company of Zimbabwe to open more satellites depots across the country so that farmers do not travel more than five kilometres to collect inputs.