Wattle Company MD says Zim in ‘realm of industrial growth’

VICTORIA Jakazi, the recently elected vice-president of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) and managing director (MD) of The Wattle Company, says following a decade of massive turbulences, the country has returned to the “realm of industrial growth”.

In an interview with Standardbusiness on Friday, Jakazi, who heads one of Zimbabwe’s biggest forestry companies, said economic factors were pointing to a rebound, with industrial capacity utilisaiton surging.

She said recovery that has been held back by Covid-19 induced lockdowns in the past year, gained traction after government implemented policies that promote private sector development.

“Industry performance has been low due to economic hardships up until 2018 when we started to see a harder drive to support industrial growth and development, through the stabilisation of the economic environment,” Jakazi said.

“We have seen capacity utilisation move up from 36% in 2019 to 47% in 2020.

“We are looking forward to an average of above 60% in 2021.

“So, we are in the realm of industrial growth, and this is happening despite the constraints brought in by Covid-19.

“Despite the constraints due to Covid-19, the economy has achieved a milestone in stabilisation and growth.”

“This is work-in-progress and more needs to happen from both government and the private sector for us to get to the Vision 2030,” added Jakazi, a generally reclusive executive who commands significant respect among her peers as she opened up.

She spoke as the CZI said Zimbabwe’s manufacturing firms committed US$21,3 million in new investments during the second quarter of this year.

In its second quarter business and economic intelligence report, the CZI said some of the investments were directed towards procuring new technologies as companies adjusted to the new operating climate brought by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The survey results show that about US$21,3 million in new investments was undertaken by the firms that responded to the survey.

“About 40% of the respondents highlighted that they had undertaken investments in their businesses over the second quarter,” the CZI said.

It said output per worker declined by about 8% during the period.

“This means that worker productivity in the second quarter was about 92% compared to the first quarter,” it said.

“However, since there were investments in new technologies only in the second quarter, it is expected that the output expansion due to this investment would be more pronounced in the third quarter, which would see productivity increasing.”

The CZI said in addition to capacity utilisation, business performance is also reflected by an increase in output.

It said business experienced an increase in production in the second quarter of 2021 compared to the same period in 2020.

About 73% of respondents highlighted that their production increased.

“This is generally expected, given that the second quarter of 2020 was marred by shortages of foreign currency, hard tighter lockdowns and high inflation, which was making it difficult for business to operate,” CZI said.

“The improvement in the general macroeconomic environment can thus be attributed to this positive performance improvement.

“On average, output across all the survey participants increased by about 3,5%.”

(See interview on Page 21)