The ManicaPost
Ray Bande
Senior Reporter
ZIMBABWE’S export performance has been steadily increasing in all sectors of the economy, even though the need for value addition remains pertinent, ZimTrade has said.
Speaking during the Manicaland Horticulture Conference held at a local hotel recently, the national trade development, promotion and advocacy body’s Eastern Region Development Manager, Mr Admire Jongwe said the country exports surpassed US$7 billion in 2022.
“Over the years, Zimbabwe’s exports have been on a rebound. As of last year, our exports surpassed US$7 billion. As a country, we are supposed to increase our exports by not less than 10 percent every year, and last year we surpassed that target.
“About 49 percent of our exports went to South Africa last year, while our second biggest chunk of exports went to the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
“Then we have Mozambique as our third biggest export destination. We also have China, Belgium, Zambia and Botswana as some of our exports destinations,” said Mr Jongwe.
He said there is need to add value to products such as macadamia nuts as part of efforts to increase the export earnings.
“ln 1992, we were exporting to diverse markets in different regions. South Africa was one of our markets, but we also had others such as USA, UK and Argentina, but our basket is shrinking.
“We now need to tap into other markets. Regionally, apart from South Africa, Mozambique, Zambia and Botswana, we do not have any other significant markets to talk of.
“Back then, we were also exporting a lot of value added products. Come 2021, most of our exports were minerals and alloys, followed by tobacco.
“Less than 20 percent of our exports are horticulture products, value added products, as well as building and construction equipment. So as we think of where we can export to, we also need to think of how we can increase our competitiveness in export markets,” said Mr Jongwe.
He urged exporters to make use of existing trading blocs to improve the country’s performance on the export market.
“We need to make use of existing trading blocs. There are various trading blocs that Zimbabwe is signatory to. COMESA, SADC, AfCFTA and EU are some of the trading blocs that we really need to take advantage of,” he said.
Mr Jongwe also urged producers of horticultural produce to leverage on the popularity of Zimbabwean products.
“Zimbabwe is known for producing great fruits. We are known to be a major producer of high quality products and we really need to ride on our good name. There is a perception out there that Zimbabwe produces tasty products, we need to leverage on that,” he said.
Mr Jongwe said exporters can also form clusters and penetrate international markets more easily.
“Under the export development initiative, we believe that it is better to do things in clusters. If you want to export, in most cases one cannot do it alone. So it is better to do it as a group.
“As ZimTrade, we have what we term the Provincial Exports Cluster. What we seek is to have organised groups of people with commodities that can be exported.
“We assist clusters so that they meet the export requirements. We have done it with the pineapple clusters where we have assisted players in pineapple production to gain competitiveness on the export market.
“We have managed to export to Netherlands, and we are now organic certified. We have got provincial initiatives being done along those lines.
“Through conferences like these ones, we get to hear of products that need to be on the export markets,” said Mr Jongwe.
Several players and experts in horticultural production, financing and export systems attended the conference.
