eBusiness Weekly
Africa Moyo
Veteran construction industry player, Daniel Garwe, says he will use his influence as a House of Assembly member to push through the Construction Industry Bill, which among others things, seeks to level the playing field in the sector.
Garwe romped to victory in the Murehwa North constituency on a Zanu-PF ticket in the July 30 harmonised elections won by the revolutionary party.
Considering that President-elect Emmerson Mnangagwa has a thrust of fronting economic revival instead of politics, Garwe says he intends to push through the Construction Industry Bill to improve the operations of the sector.
The Bill has been on the cards since 1996.
The proposed Bill has a provision for the establishment of a Construction Industry Council designed to regulate the sector by ensuring registration and monitoring of the sector.
Other sectors related to construction such as engineers and architects have legal instruments that guide their operations.
The absence of an Act of Parliament guiding the construction sector has largely been blamed for the failure by local construction companies to land high value projects both in and outside the country.
Garwe, who owns Planet Building, says the Construction Industry Bill has been languishing in Parliament for long and he will strive to ensure it sails through during the life of the next parliament.
“The Bill speaks for us, it understands what the construction industry is,” said Garwe.
“It defines what the construction industry is and what government has to do, it defines what every player in the build environment must do, it defines everyone’s role and our expectations in terms of empowerment, our expectations in terms of funding from Government and our expectations in terms of the financial industry, among others. So that Bill answers all toxic questions.”
Funding is seen as the major drawback in the sector, mainly for local players who have been in the shadows of their foreign counterparts for a long time.
Garwe said the absence of funding has seen most local contractors losing tenders to established, foreign-owned companies such as Group Five International of South Africa.
Locals have been reduced to subcontractors and consequently, generating little income which does not grow their profile.
Group Five, a subsidiary of the JSE-listed Group Five Construction, won the tender to refurbish the 828km Plumtree-Harare-Mutare Highway.
The project commenced in 2012 and was completed in 2015.
It was financed by a $206 million loan from the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA).
At the moment, Government is reportedly in negotiations with a Chinese firm, Anhui Foreign Economic Construction Group Limited (AFECC), which is earmarked to dualise the Harare-Beitbridge Highway.
The tender for the refurbishment of the key southern African highway had been awarded to Austrian firm, Geiger International, but it failed to mobilise financial resources in the last two years.
This prompted Government to withdraw the tender given the urgency with which the road has to be renovated.
But Garwe says the construction industry cannot be built “when it is foreign dominated”.
“You can’t go to (the United States of) America and start such as business without an American being a part of you. It’s a pipe dream and we want that to be the case here.
“Foreigners must go to bed with us when they come. We don’t want the experience we had in the last 10 years when one favoured nation got everything, we want to share the cake equitably,” said Garwe.
But he acknowledged that given the constrained capacity of local contractors, they would have to get contracts they can manage.
“Government must put in place measures to ensure that we can compete with others from South Africa such as Group Five. Right now there is no company that can compete with Group Five.
“So we just want that Bill to sail through (and) it’s my singular task to ensure that the Bill sails through and the industry is recognised like any other industry.
“We have engineers, they are guided by an Act of Parliament, the architects have got an Act of parliament and contractors are exposed and we are pushing for their activities to be guided by an Act of parliament so that who-ever that is coming into Zimbabwe will know they are partnering with a local,” said Garwe.
