91. A common characteristic of these companies is that most of the skilled personnel were recruited locally and trained in-house. The mobility of the employees is not discouraged, since this is viewed by the company as a way for the employees to accumulate additional experience in other companies. These employees eventually come back to the original companies in senior management positions. The brain drain especially to South Africa has not affected the operations of the companies since the company has a large pool of employees to draw from, or at worst, the companies simply streamline their activities.
3. Technical skills training provided bv other civic organizations for natural-resource transformation.
92. The Zimbabwe Chamber of Commerce (ZNCC) represents over 3000 enterprises in finance, insurance, transport, manufacturing, tourism as well as the retail and wholesale trades. ZNCC's principal role is to ensure that the views and interests of its members are taken into account in the formulation and administration of national policy. ZNCC branched off into training of retrenchees as a way of assisting technically skilled workers to become entrepreneurs. A grant was set aside to train about 600 retrenchees.
93. In January 1993, ZNCC recognized the necessity of inculcating the technological and entrepreneurial culture early on in the lives of young secondary school students so as to avoid the problem of training retrenchees. The concept of Junior Chambers of Commerce was introduced and in early 1995 there are 250 chapters in the country. These young students voluntarily participate in the programme which trains them to identify where their interests lie and to develop a
24 Ndlela, op. cit., page 21.
ECA/MRAG/95/10/MR Page 45 keen sense of business at a very early age. The programme is sponsored by private-sector enterprises.
94. The ZNCC is also involved in establishing industrial parks and incubator industries as a part of its programme of indigenization {including the black people of Zimbabwe). Irvthe case of industrial parks, there are still some problems to be solve so as to put the programme on the right path. For example, physical infrastructure such as electricity and water are not yet available. There are plans at ZNCC to introduce franchising, a project that is supported by the banks.
E. Resource mobilization for financing the transformation of natural resources into manufactured goods
95. Zimbabwe has several financial institutions that support the private and public sectors, but support to the small-scale indigenous industries is much less. The main mechanisms for financing manufacturing are commercial banks such as ANZ Grindlays, Backlays Bank, Commercial Bank, Standard Chartered Bank/and Zimbabwe Banking Corporation; finance houses; the Credit Guarantee Company (CGC) and Development Banks. As part of the Economic Reform Programme, more banks will be allowed to operate in Zimbabwe and this is likely to open up competition. Government controls two of the banks.
96. The CGC, owned jointly by the commercial banks and the Reserve Bank, works closely with the commercial banks to underpin the financing of SSEs/SSIs. Some of the commercial banks have subsidiaries offering merchant banking. Two financial institutions set up by the Government are the Small Enterprise Development Corporation (SEDCO) and the Zimbabwe Development Bank (ZDB). SEDCO is a parastatai that was established under a 1984 Act of Parliament to provide financial extension and training services to small-scale enterprises.
97. The Zimbabwe Development Bank was essentially set up by the Government after independence to mobilize financial resources on a sustained basis. By 1984, the auctioneers in the bank were the Government Reserve Bank, the African Development Bank, the Germans, Dutch and the European Industrial Bank. The ZDB can finance any viable project in any sector such as manufacturing and transportation.
98. The focus of the bank in the mid 1980s was on rehabilitation of enterprises that were mainly owned by whites. The orientation has changed recently, reflecting a higher percentage of black Zimbabweans. In 1994, there was a 33 per cent (about Z$500,000) portfolio by the indigenous population. The manufacturing sector has taken the lion's share of this amount.
99. There are still problems in giving out loans to prospective entrepreneurs because of lack of financial discipline on the part of these aspiring entrepreneurs.
Partnership arrangements have also not been successful. However, commercial banks
ECA/MRAG/95/10/MR Page 46
and financial houses through pressure from the Government had set up elaborate
schemes to provide assistance to the SMIs and SMES.25
100. Most of the financial institutions have very few women in senior technical and decision making posts. There is no Government policy on addressing gender issues and the feeble attempts by some companies are done on an ad hoc basis. This situation appears to be linked to two historical situations in Zimbabwe: (a) the traditional role of the women in society that it relegated to jobs that do not lend themselves to technical skill and 2) the situation is exacerbated by the fact that very few women go beyond the secondary eduction. The Small Enterprise Development Corporation (SEDCO) reports that out of the 500 businesses that obtain loans only four belong to women. Three out of 36 high level staff members are women.
101. Despite this dismal picture, there are still women who are very involved in the manufacturing sector especially textiles and cosmetics. These however is limited to cottage industries. The Women in Business Association (WIBA) formed in 1989 is a pressure group to enable women entrepreneurs access to credit, foreign exchange, raw materials, etc. WIBA has about 2000 members but no infrastructure and resources to follow up on their activities.
26 Detailed information on small business units of commercial banks can be found in "Support to Small-scale Industries and Enhancement of Indigenous Ownership", Prepared for the Government of Zimbabwe by UNIDO, based on the work of Zimconsult. 20 May 1993, page 92.
ECA/MRAG/95/10/MR Page 47 V. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
A. Summary
102. Zimbabwe's economy is fairly well developed and well integrated with extensive
linkages among the various economic activities. The materials-producing sectors arewell established and contribute significantly to national output and employment. In 1991 manufacturing accounted for 25 per cent of real GDP, while agriculture and
mining contributed 12 per cent and 7 per cent, respectively.103. In 1990 Zimbabwe embarked upon an export-led economic reform programme