BUY Zimbabwe is collaborating with the local certification body, Business Standards Systems Certification, to provide quality ratings to local goods and services to help them enter the export market.
The star-rating system begins with a 50% threshold. The rating scale ranges from one to five stars, with five stars representing 100% local content.
Sekai Nzenza, Minister of Industry and Commerce and a guest of honour at the signing ceremony, stated that the collaboration between Buy Zim and BSSC comes when there is a growth in locally produced goods in local markets.
“It’s gratifying to attend this event on local content certification at a time local products continue to occupy more shelf space in our supermarkets. We are projecting that by the end of the year, 70 per cent of shelf space will be taken up by local products,” said Nzenza.
“While this is a positive development, there is a need to produce quality products that are competitive locally as well as on the international market. Quality should therefore be a hallmark of locally produced goods and services as we move towards Vision 2030.”
Nzenza said the government passed the local content strategy policy as part of its commitment to increase local content. The policy is expected to boost the activities of local companies.
“Locally, if we look at the enduring brands that have withstood the test of time, they share one thing in common, and that is quality. It is pleasing that Buy Zimbabwe has decided to launch their quality certification when my ministry is seized with enhancing local content production,” she said.
“It is indeed a noble initiative to reward and offer other competitive advantages to companies that would have accelerated along the continuum towards maximisation of local content in terms of local skills and labour, inputs and raw materials.
“We believe this initiative will help boost local production and preference of locally produced goods and services while strengthening domestic value chains. The outcome can only be more jobs and wealth created for our country.”
Buy Zimbabwe chairperson Munyaradzi Hwengwere credited the government for adopting the local content strategy that primarily seeks to localise the local value chain to produce a truly made Zimbabwean product.
“We agreed that it’s not enough to say local, particularly as we get to the Continental Free Trade Area, local must never be a substitute for mediocrity; quality standards must support local. We have an existing partnership with the Standards Association of Zimbabwe, and many of our large-scale companies have secured that certification,” Hwengwere said.
“But we have also realised that a significant part of the Zimbabwean market, which is the Small Medium Enterprises, has not had the certification, and so a major thrust of this objective is beyond doing the local content rating certification for everyone. We need to drive our thrust to the informal sector to the SME sector as they too require those rebates, they too want to get into the export market but without rules of origin, without local content, then the opening up of the continental market is a pipedream.”
BSSC executive director Sebastian Zuze said they want to move towards free trade in Africa.
“What this basically means is that with the Zimbabwean products, you can take them anyway across Africa just like you are taking them to Bulawayo without any duty being paid. That is what we are hoping to get,” Zuze said.
“Without this local content rating and certification, it is going to be difficult for us to take our local products to the export market. Through this partnership, we will be able to certify big companies, even SME companies, SME is the future. We want to give our local companies home ground advantage for them to be able to call these export markets in Africa; we are preparing the Zimbabwean companies so that they go into Africa.”
