Why are local industries stagnant?

Supa Sakuwa Steel Limited Company (SSSLC) is a family business entrepreneurship specialising in manufacturing, sales and distribution of corrugated, versatile and inverted box rib (IBR) iron sheets, roofing nails, among other building and construction materials.

Levi Moyo is the brains behind the establishment of the company.

Moyo is indisputably a hardworking and resilient entrepreneur who started small-sized, and is slowly rising to make a mark on the building, and steel industry.

With less than five years in existence, the company is proving to be a force to reckon with. It has created job opportunities for Malawians who would otherwise be suffering effects of unemployment, which continues to rise beyond control.

SSSLC is directly employing over 20-fulltime employees in the administration, sales and marketing and transport departments, among others.

Dozens are also benefitting through supplying the company’s products thereby enabling them to play a part in growing the economy.

Since its establishment, Supa Sakuwa has offered competitive prices on its products, sometimes cheaper than other companies that came before it.

President Peter Mutharika, at any given opportunity, emphasises that small businesses could be staple of the community, providing employment and the economic stability for communities and their members.

It is based on this premise that Mutharika has been urging Malawians to resurrect the spirit of national pride, dignity and self-esteem by consuming domestically-produced products.

Speaking in Lilongwe a few months past when he launched the “Buy Malawi Strategy”, the President observed that the country has failed to tackle chronic challenges that weakened the productive sector because citizens have insatiable hunger for foreign products.

“We have undermined our nations confidence, crushed our self-esteem and broken our national pride and dignity for too long. We must start believing in our products and services,” emphasised Mutharika.

He added: “Who will believe in our products if we, the owners, cannot believe in them and how can we become an exporting nation if we don’t believe in our products? This is time for us to embrace our locally-made goods and services.”

Mutharika is not the first leader to make such a call. Former presidents Bakili Muluzi, Bingu wa Mutharika and Joyce Banda made similar prayers before him.

With such calls, which often come in various tones and forms, one can be excused for expecting that the local industry would register tremendous growth in specified period of time.

However, this is not the case. Local entrepreneurs such as Moyo face adversity are forced to compete with low priced goods imported from developing countries particularly China, which sometimes come in compromised quality.

Therefore questions become: What is holding the local industry from growing? Why are local entrepreneurs stagnating in spite of putting up a gallant fight and working tirelessly to improve on quality of their products and services?

Salima-based honey and moringa powder manufacturer, Asiyatu Alindise, faults government; which she argues, has failed to put in place deliberate measures to protect the local entrepreneur.

Alindise says she doubts the honesty of the leaders when they make calls for the support and promotion of local products.

“Otherwise, they could have developed strategies that are solely aimed at protecting local entrepreneurs who hardly have adequate capital to compete with foreign investors,” she explains.

It is important that we state here that Malawi would not be the first country to put in place strict measures to protect small and medium entreprises.

In Zimbabwe, Finance Minister, Patrick Chinamasa, announced to the world in April 2016 that his government would start protecting “critical industrial sectors from cheap imports, as the country struggles to stem de-industrialisation, which has undermined the economy and worsened a liquidity crunch”.

Chinamasa said industries with the potential to expand into the region would be protected from foreign competition.

He, however, challenged local companies to demonstrate their capacity to produce fairly priced, high quality goods before approaching government for protection.

Earlier in March 2016, Ghana’s Ministry of Trade and Industry said it would, through a Legislative Instrument, place a ceiling on the annual importation of cement into the country in a bid to “sanitise the sector” and protect local manufacturers from unfair competition.

While faulting Malawi Government for failing to empower, protect and promote local entrepreneurs, village head Loti Chisambi apportions the blame on Malawians whom he accuses of being unpatriotic.

Loti Chisambi observes that Malawians have insatiable appetite for foreign products, which defeats the growth of local industries.

“Right from our leaders at the Capital Hill down to the ordinary citizen, we are guilty of lacking patriotism. For instance, how many local companies has government awarded tenders to supply iron sheets in the Descent and Affordable Housing Subsidy (Malata and Cement) Programme?” he probes.

“This should be the starting point if we are serious about promoting local industry and Buy Malawi Strategy. Otherwise, all this rhetoric will be in vain,” he concludes. n