Blackouts hit 30% of production
“We are asking for us$3,9 million. It is built over 7,9 hectares and has more than 100 rooms. at the moment it is being leased by the Zimbabwe Revenue authority (Zimra).”
The hotel was built during boom times for Zimbabwe’s tourism industry in the late 1990s.
It became the centre of global attraction during the June 21, 2001 three-hour solar eclipse whose pathway was above the Limpopo River and viewed better from Beitbridge or south africa's Kruger National Park.
In Zimbabwe, the perfect place to view the spectacle was at the property.
But after its collapse in 2016, locals and other consultants in the hotel and restaurants industry said big players had priced themselves out.
across the Limpopo in south africa, firms of the same size were flourishing.
During a tour of Beitbridge in June, tourism minister Mangaliso Ndhlovu said he hoped the building that housed the two hotels would be put to good use. He said most importantly it would be good for them to find investors in to promote southern Zimbabwe tourism.
In a recent interview with the minister said there were many positive developments in the tourism sector since the beginning of the year. The industry was the worst affected by pandemic lockdowns, which hit the country from 2020.
“as of the first quarter of the year international tourist arrivals have risen by 93% to 126 955 from 65 882 in the same period in 2021,” Ndhlovu said in May.
“There have been positive performances in all areas including domestic tourism and accommodation facility utilisation. For example, the average hotel utilisation has risen by 20 percentage points from 14% in 2021 to 34% this year.
“Based on this positive performance in the first quarter, the tourism sector is expected to fare much better in 2022 compared to 2021,” he added.
Beitbridge lies between the gonarezhou National Park in Zimbabwe and Mapungubwe National Park in south africa.
From A1 overhaul of production.
“An overhaul programme on two of the five boilers is nearing completion. These initiatives are expected to result in a significant improvement in production. Production and sales volumes for Country Choice Foods have improved significantly due to the commissioning of an automatic syrup filling machine, a more robust competitive pricing strategy, as well as the introduction of new product lines namely baking powder, raisins and cocoa powder,” the firm said.
“This resulted in notable increases in sales and production volumes by 81% and 68%, respectively, from the prior year comparative period.”
Ariston announced that the power cuts increased substantially during the period, while seed technology outfit, Seed Co said it was also affected by power cuts.
In an interview with businessdigest, Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) president Kurai Matsheza said the manufacturing sector was badly affected.
He said Zimbabwe must pay up outstanding debts to regional suppliers to access power imports.
“The power problems are hitting all sectors of the economy,” the CZI boss said.
“These problems are arising from the depressed generation at Hwange due to aged plants, the unplanned outage at Kariba arising from the failure of a thrust bearing on a new unit and the inability to pay for imports timeously due to shortages of United States dollars.”
He added that the solution to the crisis was to quickly bring on-stream units 7 & 8 at Hwange.
Chamber of Mines of Zimbabwe CEO, Isaac Kwesu said mining companies had not been spared from the power supply deficit.
“Most mining companies, specifically those not connected to dedicated power lines, continue to report power outages that have resulted in production stoppagits boilers to scale up es and output losses,” Kwesu said.
“If the situation is not addressed some mining companies would miss their annual output targets.”
Kamungeremu noted that capacity utilisation was being affected by electricity outages.
“Zesa power cuts are really affecting industry capacity utilisation due to lost production during times when there is no power,” Kamungeremu told businessdigest.
“I have been talking to some of our members and some of them have experienced up to eight hours of continuous power cuts. That means if they don’t have alternative sources of power then that means production stops for those eight hours.
“Some have been saying they had to even send workers home because there was no power. I have been trying to get a figure of lost production that they have recorded.
“Some are just estimating that over 30% in production has been lost due to the power cuts.
“For those that have managed to put in place alternatives and are continuous on generators, the cost is prohibitive. What they are paying out on a daily basis to run the generators is just something else,” Kamungeremu added.