News / National
Minister pledges to link industry, colleges
19 Sep 2018 at 06:59hrs | Views
INDUSTRY and Commerce Minister, Nqobizitha Mangaliso Ndlovu has pledged to facilitate strong partnership between industry and higher learning institutions in developing innovative packages that will anchor transformation of the country's manufacturing sector.
At a time when most firms are struggling to repair ageing equipment, at much higher cost with minimal output, Minister Ndlovu called on institutions of higher learning to rise to the occasion and impart new knowledge on production processes.
Technology constitutes one of the major cost drivers in Zimbabwe and these have been blamed for frustrating local competitiveness when compared to regional benchmarks. As a result of such bottlenecks, Minister Ndlovu said the country was spending millions importing equipment and goods, which can be produced locally.
He told a gathering of former and current students at the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) last Friday that local training institutions need to play their part in bridging the technology gap in industries.
"There is common feeling, a common saying by people that cost of production is high because of technological obsoleteness, and my response today is that we have NUST and we cannot complain about that," he said.
Minister Ndlovu said inventions should address societal problems with one of the country's biggest challenge being the import bill of average $6 billion and an average annual trade deficit of about $3 billion.
"We have to analyse our import bill, analyse what we are importing, what we can produce locally, what support is needed for the manufacturing sector, which ever sector so as to reduce the import bill," he said.
"If we have command agriculture reducing our import bill on maize and or cereals, why can't we have command manufacturing? We will explore those options but our efforts will be channelled towards increased production with a view of import substitution, with view of even increasing exports where possible for us to earn more foreign currency."
At a time when most firms are struggling to repair ageing equipment, at much higher cost with minimal output, Minister Ndlovu called on institutions of higher learning to rise to the occasion and impart new knowledge on production processes.
Technology constitutes one of the major cost drivers in Zimbabwe and these have been blamed for frustrating local competitiveness when compared to regional benchmarks. As a result of such bottlenecks, Minister Ndlovu said the country was spending millions importing equipment and goods, which can be produced locally.
He told a gathering of former and current students at the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) last Friday that local training institutions need to play their part in bridging the technology gap in industries.
"There is common feeling, a common saying by people that cost of production is high because of technological obsoleteness, and my response today is that we have NUST and we cannot complain about that," he said.
Minister Ndlovu said inventions should address societal problems with one of the country's biggest challenge being the import bill of average $6 billion and an average annual trade deficit of about $3 billion.
"We have to analyse our import bill, analyse what we are importing, what we can produce locally, what support is needed for the manufacturing sector, which ever sector so as to reduce the import bill," he said.
"If we have command agriculture reducing our import bill on maize and or cereals, why can't we have command manufacturing? We will explore those options but our efforts will be channelled towards increased production with a view of import substitution, with view of even increasing exports where possible for us to earn more foreign currency."
Source - chronicle
