Industry and Commerce Minister Dr Mangaliso Ndlovu has revealed that the government will soon roll out a Local Content Strategy aimed at promoting the use of locally manufactured raw materials in Zimbabwe's manufacturing sector.
The move comes as Zimbabwe continues to spend an estimated US$1.5 billion annually on industrial consumables, with basic imports such as crude soya bean oil alone accounting for US$212 million in 2023. South Africa and China remain the country's main source markets for industrial inputs.
Market analysts believe the actual import bill could be even higher, as activities within the informal manufacturing sector are often not fully captured in official statistics.
Speaking in Parliament this week, Ndlovu said government was working to strengthen domestic value chains by encouraging manufacturers to utilise locally produced raw materials.
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"We will soon be launching what we call the Local Content Strategy, where we are promoting the uptake of local raw materials in the manufacturing processes. This strategy will embed with it fiscal incentives for those manufacturing companies that are using local resources and reaching certain thresholds, beginning with somewhere around 60%.
"This is subject to final approval by the Minister of Finance. This will see most of our primary producers and intermediate producers have greater uptake of their products in manufacturing processes," he said.
Ndlovu added that government had already taken steps to promote mineral value addition by suspending exports of semi-processed minerals, in a bid to encourage companies to invest in local beneficiation.
"I might also add that we are looking at some of the sectors with low barriers to entry, where there is capacity for our own people to produce intermediate goods. We call it manufacturing for manufacturing. We have reserved some of these sectors to our own people, as they are the major manufacturers in these sectors to supply the bigger manufacturing companies," said Ndlovu.
The minister also revealed that government is accelerating efforts to promote rural industrialisation following Cabinet's approval of a Rural Development and Industrialisation Committee.
The committee, chaired by the Minister of Agriculture, has been tasked with consolidating and coordinating initiatives aimed at driving industrial growth in rural communities.
