Here is some good news from Zimbabwe: capacity use in the country’s manufacturing sector has improved.
However, this is unlikely to improve confidence in the economy, especially with retrenchments mounting and only about 18 percent of companies managing to sink money into capital investment.
The Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) said on Wednesday that results of a survey into Zimbabwe’s manufacturing sector shows capacity use had improved 13 percentage points to 47 percent this year so far.
“We have 47.4 percent overall capacity utilisation for the manufacturing sector and this is an improvement of about 13 percent on the past year,” said Daphine Mazambani, economist with the CZI, which represents all the major industry and manufacturing companies in the country.
In terms of capacity use, 54 percent of Zimbabwean industries “are operating at between 0 and 49 percent” while 20 percent are operating at between 50 and 70 percent,” the survey results show.
Only about 8 percent are operating at 100 percent while 12 percent of manufacturing firms are running at between 71 and 90 percent.
PPC, Tiger Brands and Tongaat Hulett are among South African companies that have manufacturing units in Zimbabwe.
Source: IOL
