Manufacturing Firm Survey 2015-2016

The survey was undertaken by Professor Lawrence Edwards of the School of Economics, University of Cape Town, under the Project Matched Employee-Employer Panel-Data for Labour Market Analysis in Zimbabwe. The Project was funded by IZA/DFID as part of the IZA/DFID Growth and Labour Markets in Low Income Countries Programme and administered by the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU) at the University of Cape Town. This project addresses some of the data constraints that inhibit appropriate research and policy formulation on Zimbabwean manufacturing. The objective of the project was to build a panel of firm data in Zimbabwe that covers various years over the period 1993 to 2015 and to add a matched survey of employees covering the period 2015 to 2016. The basis of the firm panel is the Regional Programme on Enterprise Development (RPED) surveys of manufacturing firms in Zimbabwe conducted in in 1993, 1994, and 1995.

The first component of the project was the tracing and re-surveying of the 203 manufacturing firms surveyed under the RPED programme in 1994. Of these firms, 78 firms (representing 38.4% of the 203 firms) were still surviving and operating in the same business in 2015. 40 firms (19.7%) had closed down. The rest include firms that merged (8 firms or 3.9%), or firms for which no information on operational status was found (32 or 15.8%). 39 of the surviving firms were successfully re-interviewed. The second component of the project comprised a survey of formal manufacturing firms in Zimbabwe. The collection of firm survey data took place over the period August - December 2015. A total of 195 registered manufacturing firms were surveyed in Bulawayo (51), Harare (119), Mutare (10) and Gweru/Kwekwe (15) in 5 manufacturing industries (Food, Wood products, metal products, chemicals, other). The third component was a survey of informal manufacturing firms located in Bulawayo and Harare. A total of 131 informal firms were surveyed in October - December 2015. Between October and December 2016, the informal firm owners were re-contacted telephonically to provide information on amongst other variables, firm performance (sales, raw material costs, investment), employment and income. A total of 100 informal firm owners were re-interviewed. The final component of the project was the collection of data from workers in the formal and informal firms surveyed. A total of 1385 workers in formal firms and 173 workers in informal firms were surveyed in October - December 2015. Between October and December 2016, 1198 of these workers (combined formal and informal) (77% success rate) were re-interviewed telephonically from South Africa. This project will enable a new body of evidence on how past structural changes in the Zimbabwean economy during the period of economic crisis affected labour markets, as well as how future growth and structural change link to labour market outcomes. In collecting, providing and analysing the data, the project aims to build a closer synergy between evidence and policy formulation in Zimbabwe.