Financial Gazette (Harare)
Shame Makoshori
29 November 2008
Harare — THE Jingniu Group, a Chinese company, will spend about US$400 million in the next five years in constructing a glass manufacturing factory in Kadoma, The Financial Gazette can reveal.
Construction of the glass producing and processing centre by the Jingniu Group is already underway amid expectations that the project might absorb thousands of workers who were left jobless following the closure of gold mines and textile factories in and around Kadoma.
"With a planned investment of US$400 million and occupying an area of 100 hectares, China Jingniu Glass Factory in Zimbabwe is expected to be completed in five years," said a statement jointly issued by the Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China, China National Machinery and Equipment Corporation and CMEC International Exhibition Company.
Once completed, the factory would become the second glass-manufacturing project to operate in Kadoma after a similar project by Romanian firm, Romsit, a joint venture with the Industrial Development Corporation, collapsed in the 1990s after it failed to produce durable glass.
Under Zimbabwe's "Look East Policy," the country has been promoting ties with Chinese companies.
Trade volumes between the two countries are expected to peak to US$500 million this year from US$275 million in 2006.
China has become the country's second largest trading partner after South Africa although the balance of trade has remained in favour of the Asian economic giant.
Chinese investors have built the Sino-Zimbabwe Cement Company in Gweru that has become one of the largest cement producers in Zimbabwe with exports into southern Africa among other projects.
The Chinese government is also planning to build rural schools and an agricultural technology experimenting centre in Zimbabwe.
A Chinese official recently told The Financial Gazette that his country would this year double tobacco imports from Zimbabwe to US$100 million from US$40 million last year.
"China is the biggest buyer of Zimbabwean tobacco," Hu Ming, economic and commercial chancellor at the Chinese Embassy in Harare said. "China wants to buy more tobacco from Zimbabwe this year because it is good quality tobacco. We used to import big volumes of tobacco from Brazil but Zimbabwean tobacco has good quality and the people of China want more of it. China will import US$100 million (worth of tobacco) this year," Ming added.
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