Editor - The Honourable Minister of Finance, Tendai Biti, has capitulated to the deafening "public outcry" and promised to slash duty on clothing and textiles.
What remains unclear is what the intention of the introduction of duty was. For indeed if the introduction of duty was driven by a realisation that we have transformed the economy into a supermarket for regional manufacturers, then the reaction of the minister is ill-advised and totally unhelpful to the few remaining textile players who have put everything to survive this long.
Textile firms that used to employ thousands of people have the painful experience of paying the few remaining workers who then proceed to use their pitiable wages to buy non-local textile products. This is a vicious cycle, which cannot be solved by yielding to the selfish outcry of a few cross border traders.
Bulawayo, which is the home of textile and clothing, has read and seen about the US$40 million distressed fund in the newspapers. It is therefore unfortunate that politics has been allowed to get into the way of common sense. Yet the truth is that the local industry is too incapacitated to meet the minimum demand on textile and clothing. Therefore, the policy has to address the twin realities of meeting demand and resuscitating the local textile industry. It is my well considered view that the Honourable Minister should retain the duty at current levels for all finished products and relax duty on raw materials for textile and clothing.
Furthermore, the minister must consider scrapping duty on machinery and spares to create the necessary impetus for the resuscitation of the local textile industry. Such intervention will create employment and also enable the textile industry to recover. It is not helpful in the long- term to approach all the sectors of the economy with the same solution as the medicine prescribed might be worse than the disease.
The outcry against the duty also fails to appreciate the damage that has been suffered by the economy and it must be clear to every Zimbabwean that we are only postponing the inevitable pain that must be endured before sanity is restored.
While it is good to listen to everyone, it is best to sometimes take hard and difficult decisions for the long-term sustainable development of the nation. Obsolete machinery has continued to exaggerate our production costs, yet the nation needs to swallow the bitter pill. We will never develop our nation unless the leadership understands that the time to take long- term strategic decisions is now, notwithstanding the inevitable pain that the reversal of the economic decline will entail. It is the cost to our account of dereliction of duty and bad policies.
I am disappointed that the minister seems to have failed to adequately consult all the stakeholders and hence seems to have been shocked by the inflationary ramifications of the decision. Does the minister know the capacity of the local industry as presently configured? Perhaps a quota system for imports at a reduced level will help to breathe life into the textile sector. In the final analysis, I sincerely applaud the minister on his stance on used underwear. Frankly, even if the underwear was to be distributed for free, it is unimaginable, disgusting and surely degrading for us to allow used underwear to be imported for resale. Even countries that have applied for the Highly Indebted Poor country status have never done that.
What will our children say when they hear that we were buying used underwear? It is better not to have underwear at all than to put on underwear that others have discarded and maybe whose owners have died of God knows what diseases. I am ashamed.
Proudly Zimbabwean textile manufacturer
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