ZIMBABWE’S manufacturing sector recorded a 70 percent increase in foreign currency receipts to US$224,4 million in the nine months to September 2019, up from US$132,8 million during the same period in the previous year, central bank data has shown.
The gains come as a shock given the tough operating environment manufacturers endured during the year.
Kupukile Mlambo, the RBZ’s deputy governor told a recent business meeting that total foreign currency receipts were, however, nine percent lower at US$5,5 billion after key contributors like mining and tobacco saw decreases of 23 percent and 15 percent respectively.
At the beginning of 2019 the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) had warned of a gloomy year projecting that capacity utilisation would decline to 34,3 percent from the previous year’s 48,2 percent as the power crisis and foreign currency shortages weighed on the economy.
“We are suffering effective load-shedding that is running for up to 18 hours a day and production has been declining across all our membership,” Kurai Matsheza, CZI’s energy subcommittee chairman, said recently at The Financial Gazette’s inaugural Annual Energy Innovation Summit.
“We do a capacity utilisation analysis every year, which has been tracking southwards.
“And even though we are still to do our survey for 2019, judging by what our members are saying, it is actually going to be significantly lower this year as a result of the power shortages”.
As a result, companies have been facing unprecedented downtime while operating costs have skyrocketed as firms turn to diesel-powered generators to stay operational.
An earlier survey by the industry body covering the period September 2017 to August 2018, had also warned that low confidence in the economy due to lack of a clear policy direction on currency issues, among other factors, would result in companies scaling down operations in 2019.
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