Japanese firm plots Zimbabwe return

Japanese firm plots Zimbabwe return
Published: 04 July 2018
MARUBENI Corporation, a Japan-based trading and investment conglomerate operating in a broad range of sectors, is looking to expand its activities in Zimbabwe.

Speaking to NewsDay on the sidelines of the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce annual congress held in Victoria Falls last week, Marubeni's regional director (Sub-Saharan Africa), Atsunori Toyoda said they were looking to penetrating Zimbabwe's market.

"Our company is a conglomerate. We are handling almost everything like food, agriculture, fertiliser, gas, chemicals, infrastructure, power, water, machinery business among others. So we are looking at any opportunity here in Zimbabwe to make trading and some investment," Toyoda said.

"So we are just trying to see opportunities and we are looking at the change of situation in Zimbabwe after the election so that we can come again and expand our business. We used to have car service business with the Zimbabwean partner before. This is also some kind of the business that we are targeting."

The company, according to Toyoda, left the Zimbabwean market 15 years ago due to the economic decline among other issues.

Pressed further to confirm whether they were looking forward to setting up any manufacturing plant in Zimbabwe, Toyoda said: "Not as yet. As I said, we are trying to identify the opportunities and once we identify the opportunities we are going to set up the office and then enter into the market."

Since coming into power through a military back up, President Emmerson Mnangagwa has been urging investors across the globe to come and invest in Zimbabwe. To date, investment commitments worth $16 billion have been reported.

But analysts have raised a red flag over government's failure to do due diligence on some of the mega deals it had signed so far.

Marubeni Corporation is a Japanese trading company, one of the largest general trading companies in Japan.

It is involved in the handling of products and provision of services in a broad range of sectors. These areas encompass importing and exporting, as well as transactions in the Japanese market, related to food materials, food products, textiles, materials, pulp and paper, chemicals, energy, metals and mineral resources, transportation machinery, and includes offshore trading.

The company's activities also extend to power projects and infrastructure, plants and industrial machinery, finance, logistics and information industry, and real estate development and construction.

The company conducts business investment, development and management on a global level.
- newsday
Tags: Marubeni,

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