Local and international delegates will tomorrow descend on Bulawayo for the ZimTrade Annual Exporters Conference, being hosted by Zimbabwe’s second-largest city for the first time.
“In line with the devolution drive by government, this is the first time the conference is being held out of Harare and given the potential that Bulawayo represents as an industrial hub and also its declaration as a Special Economic Zone,” said ZimTrade in their market update.
Running under the theme: “Re-think, Reform, Export,” the indaba is set to bring together government, local exporters, industry players, academia and sector experts to discuss best approaches aimed at addressing challenges faced by local businesses.
The conference comes at a time when the economy is at its worst since 2009 when the country adopted a multicurrency regime, later abandoned on June 24.
The biggest industrial lobby group, Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) has also projected that manufacturing sector capacity utilisation will drop to about 30 percent this year from 48 percent in 2018 due to negative macro-economic factors bedeviling the economy.
To be held at the Zimbabwe International Exhibition Centre, popularly known as the trade fair grounds, the conference, according to ZimTrade, aims at fostering dialogue and linkages between delegates and business leaders from different sectors with a view to coming up with solutions that will improve Zimbabwe’s trade balance.
“These resolutions will inform engagement activities that ZimTrade will use to facilitate on improving Zimbabwe’s export capacity and the ease of doing export business,” added ZimTrade.
The two-day business event will culminate in the exporters’ awards ceremony on Thursday evening and a buyers’ seminar on Friday at a local hotel.
Buyers have been invited from countries such as Botswana, Democratic Republic Congo, Namibia, Zambia and the United Kingdom.
