Edgar Vhera
Specialist Writer – Agribusiness
THE business community has welcomed the proposed suspension of customs duty on critical inputs, saying it will improve capacity utilisation, preserve scarce working capital, and align with Zimbabwe’s commitment to the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
Presenting the 2026 National Budget recently, Finance, Economic Development and Investment Promotion Minister, Professor Mthuli Ncube, said from January 1, 2026 the country would suspend customs duty on critical production inputs.
“Mr Speaker Sir, under the Customs and Excise legislation, some raw materials, intermediate goods, and capital equipment attract import duties ranging from five to 25 percent.
“While duty serves to protect domestic industries, in some instances it increases production costs, particularly for manufacturers reliant on imported inputs not locally available in sufficient quantities or quality,” he said.
Prof Ncube said the elevated input costs had constrained industrial productivity, reduced export competitiveness, and discouraged value addition and beneficiation across key sectors of the economy.
“Mr Speaker Sir, I, therefore, propose to introduce a structured and time-bound suspension of import duty on critical production inputs for eligible industries, targeting the following sectors, among others, with significant backward and forward linkages: Iron and steel production, particularly inputs used in smelting, rolling, and fabrication; and Agro-processing, including edible oils and food processing additives.
“These measures take effect from January 1, 2026,” he said.
The Finance Minister said the proposed interventions would also enhance the country’s ability to leverage opportunities under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) by enabling producers to meet regional quality and price competitiveness standards.
Oil Expressers Association of Zimbabwe (OEAZ) representative and Zimbabwe Investment and Development Agency (ZIDA) chair, Mr Busisa Moyo, said the removal of duty would certainly improve capacity utilisation and preserve the increasingly scarce working capital. Players under OEAZ have grown from three in 2010 to eight at present and have injected over US$100 million in both foreign and local investment into the sector since the dollarisation of the economy in 2009.
Though the country’s cooking oil sector is a good model of localising value chains, as all cooking oil is produced locally, it requires about 180 000 tonnes of the product per year, and this can only be realised from the production of one million tonnes of oilseeds on about 500 000 hectares.
The Crops, Horticulture, Fisheries and Livestock Summer Plan 2025–26 planned to produce soya beans on 77 000 ha, sunflower on 160 000 ha, and cotton on 270 000 ha.
The hectarage committed to soya bean, sunflower, and cotton cannot produce enough to meet local demand, hence the need to import oilseeds. If oilseed imports are levied, then cooking oil and stockfeed prices will rise.
Even though oil expressers buy and consume all the oilseeds produced locally, with some going into direct capacitation of local farmers through provision of inputs and agronomy services under contract farming, local supply cannot meet requirements, necessitating imports.
One of the oil expressing companies, Chiseller, said they were contracting soya beans on 400 hectares but the output was not enough to meet their requirements.
Chiseller Services owner and director, Mr Francois Kriel, said local cost of production was high, making it difficult to compete with countries producing low-cost genetically modified organisms (GMO) soya beans, and welcomed the extension of the removal of import duty.
Stockfeed Manufacturers Association of Zimbabwe executive administrator, Dr Reneth Mano, said the Government was doing the right thing to try to catch up on the de-tariffication schedule under AfCFTA.
“Remember that under AfCFTA, Zimbabwe has already made some commitment to reduce import tariffs. It is terribly behind schedule on reducing tariffs on some categories of agro-industrial materials,” he said.
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